Chapter 4

The Doctor sat at a table in the corner of the room. Hiding from the mingling people, he looked out at those there that he knew. He noted the changes, how they had aged, and continued on with their lives, while he was stuck in the same life, doing the same thing, wandering the universe and fixing things – meddling, as his people described it. Tegan and Turlough where together; she was one of the few he could have loved if he had let himself. Then there was Sarah Jane. She'd picked up her life now and had a son, and for him she was another regret: someone he could have been with, and whom he had loved a little. Then there was Romana, oh Romana, there was so much to say about her. They had been lovers for a short time before they had parted. She went off into E Space and he went on. When she came back to Gallifrey she had her own life, and he had his - one which didn't involve his home world. Now she was gone, along with the rest of Gallifrey and his people.

But out of all the people he had known and travelled with in his entire lifetime, his biggest regret was Rose. His Rose, how much he loved her still. He'd held back in a misguided sense that somehow it would hurt less if he didn't acknowledge their feelings and the special bond they had. He'd wandered around aimlessly for ten years after the whole incident with Donna turning up on his TARDIS, before he'd found Martha. During that time he had plenty of time to think about Rose and how he should have gave in, should have had that small measure of comfort and happiness. He knew now that he truly loved her, like he would never love again. It was that soul-deep love, the kind that a thousand different poets, authors, and song writers had tried to write about, using millions of words, for almost as long as time itself. On more lonely days he contemplated what life would have been like if he had been stuck with her all those years in the future, in that house with the doors, and windows, and a mortgage, and suddenly it didn't seem so bad. For as long as she lived he would be with her and love her, and deal with the aftermath when it happened, knowing the heartache but still being able to look back on better times when he was loved and for the first time truly had a home. If he ever had a chance with her again he'd tell her everyday how he felt and would treat her like a queen and never take her for granted ever again.

The face of Boe said he was not alone, but he knew deep down he was wrong even if it did spell out Yana. The Doctor had never been more alone, and being the last of the Time Lords was a tall order, well okay technically he wasn't, the Master had survived but he wasn't exactly helping. He had to do so much, fix so many anomalies and cracks in time, all on his own. He'd had plenty of time to think about it and he knew now that as much as it pained him he would have to have children to continue his race, train them to follow in his footsteps so to be capable of helping him, but there was no one other than his Rose he could even imagine taking the time to stop travelling for, settle down and to have these children with. So it seemed he would be alone and faced with this task for the rest of his life. It was his penance for his sins. But right now what he wanted more than ever was his father because even though they never got along and was practically raised by his older brother, the closed-off man at least knew what it was to be in love with a human.

"You look lost and broken," the Brigadier remarked as he sat down beside the Doctor.

The Doctor plastered on his happy mask. "Me lost? I'm always lost, never know where I'm going to end up most the time. Just ask Sarah, dropped her off in Aberdeen instead of Croydon! And I'm alright! You know me, I'm always alright."

"Yes, I know about Sarah, she called me afterwards and I had to send someone up to Aberdeen to get her. And yes I do know you, which is why I know you're plastering on a façade and you're not alright. That might work on most people, Doctor, but it won't work on me. What happened?"

The Doctor let out a long sigh and slumped slightly. The Brigadier did indeed know him very well, as did Sarah, and he knew one or both of them would ask. "Billions upon billions of Daleks happened." He swallowed a lump. "There was a war between my people and the Daleks and we lost. Everyone lost. My home, my people, it was all sacrificed to save the whole universe, the whole multiverse even. I'm all that's left. I became a shadow of myself doing the same old thing on my own, didn't want anyone to have to endure my company, and I often took large risks hoping to die and be with the rest of my people. "

"But something happened to change all that?" The Brigadier asked.

The Doctor gave a ghost of a smile in return. "I met a girl. An ordinary shop girl, in the auton attack the shop she worked in had a transmitter relay. I was in the basement of that shop and she was down there to hand in the lottery takings to some manager that was already dead. I grabbed her hand and said one word, just one word: 'run'. We kept running, didn't stop, until she was pulled into another universe and I lost her. I can't get to her.

But, Rassilon, I loved her, still love her, will always love her. I love her more than anything, more than the Earth, the universe, my TARDIS, time and space itself, and it scares the hell out of me. Then me, like the big blundering idiot I am, kept trying to ignore how I felt, and she obviously felt some noble sense of protecting herself, or, more to the point, me since I'm going to live so much longer, and everyone leaves in the end."

"We can all be idiots when it comes to women, and it appears you're no different to the rest of us, Doctor. Just look how long it took me to marry Doris."

"At least Doris was still in reach when you stopped being an idiot. There's no way of getting to Rose. I died for her once you know? I sent her home during a Dalek invasion far far into the future from now but she never did listen to me, she looked into the TARDIS, into the time vortex, and came back. She looked so beautiful, glowing in swirling light. She just waved her hand and all the Daleks turned to dust, just because she loved me. The time vortex was going to burn her up so I kissed her to draw out the time vortex and put it back in the TARDIS, but it merged our souls, we became true soul mates then, which wouldn't have happened unless our feelings were true. It was too much and I regenerated into this body, but it was so worth it. I'd use all my remaining regenerations to do the same again. Now she's trapped on a parallel Earth with her mum and a parallel version of her dad, along with her ex-boyfriend Mickey, and I can't get to her, it's literally impossible. Not without collapsing two universes at any rate."

"Never say never. The one thing that's stayed the same, through all the years I've known you, is that, for you, nothing is impossible."

"Alistair! Come over here and see this."

"Coming Doris my dear." The Brigadier got up and turned to the Doctor, "I guess we're just two old fools in love." He clapped him on the shoulder and added before leaving, "never give up hope old friend. If anyone deserves a bit of happiness it's you, and life has a funny way of sorting things out in the end."

The Doctor gave a small, sad smile and muttered, "if only it were true."

"If only what was true?" Martha asked coming out from the shadows, pretending she hadn't heard the entire conversation. She didn't mean to eavesdrop, it was just unavoidable from where she was trapped hoping they wouldn't see her there. That, and the fact she was guiltily curious since the Doctor was so closed and never told anyone anything. It took getting kidnapped, and then nearly eaten by giant crab things, for him to tell her the truth about his people and the war, and he mentioned Rose all the time yet never really told her anything.

"Oh nothing, just that you can't reach between your shoulder blades on your back right in the middle. Quite annoying that when you have an itch. Though I suppose if you where double jointed you could, would be handy to be double jointed--"

"Except hyper mobility can leave the person prone to inflammatory arthritis, don't fancy that myself," a man with greying curly hair and an expensive suit replied.

"Doctor Sullivan," Martha acknowledged, recognising the man instantly.

"Miss Joans? So that's where you've got off to aye."

"Harry! Looks like everyone is here today. How you doing? You two know one another then I take it?" The Doctor asked.

"Oh yes, I'm a consultant now at the Royal Hope Hospital, retired from my work with UNIT and NATO. I'm teaching, along with several other consultants, and Miss Joans here's one of my pupils. Sadly I have to say I missed the trip to the moon by about twenty minutes."

"Oh you should have seen it, Harry. It would have been just like the old days. Plasmavore and Judoon on the moon, the whole hospital shining in the earthlight. Martha here saved my life, excellent CPR on a two-hearted person, you should make a note of that in her file, give her extra credit."

"You two travelled together as well then?"

"For a short time," Harry replied as Jack came with drinks. A pint of whatever eco-friendly beer they where trying to fob off on him, a large glass of coke for the Doctor, and a fancy cocktail with a little umbrella in it for Martha.

"Oh who's your rather sexy friend here? I can go back and get you a drink, what will it be? A screwdriver, sex on the beach--"

"It's okay chap I'm leaving," Harry replied quickly shooting dirty looks at Jack and hurrying away.

Jack laughed, his eyes on Harry's ass as the man disappeared into the crowd. "That's the problem with people in this time period, they aren't flexible enough."

"Harry's an old fashioned guy, even when I first met him," the Doctor replied, laughing. He then looked dubiously at his glass. "It's not diet is it?"

"No it's regular Coca-Cola, just like you asked, though it'd be funny if it wasn't if the last time was anything to go by."

"No thanks, too many people know me here."

"Why, what happened?" Martha asked.

"The exact chemical composition of Diet Coke has an intoxicating effect on Time Lord physiology. Alcohol, for the record, is no problem, can metabolise it at will. Diet Coke takes longer to metabolise, whereas Regular coke, as the Americans call it, is really good for the Time Lord physiology and helps focus the brain while giving an energy boost," The Doctor clarified and took a long gulp of the soft drink then added because of the look Martha was giving, "Not human. The mixture of aspartame and phenyl in Diet Coke has that alcohol-like effect, whereas regular is more sobering as it is somewhat more natural and the sugar gives a more long-term energy boost."

"He was off his head," Jack sniggered. "He took off all his clothes but his underpants and started dancing on the tables singing some Gallifreyian drinking song involving Rassilon and bananas, and declared his undying love for his shoes."

"They were really nice shoes I'll have you know 'Mister Ends-Up-Naked-No-Matter-Where-We-Go'. I was given those shoes by the queen of the royal court of New Paris. She's probably dead now after that virus killed everyone on New Earth except the ones who were in the under city of New New York. She was a cat you know, a silver tabby, loved the ball of string I got her from the yarn factories of Acadia--"

"One thing you've not lost Doctor is your ability to ramble," Jack observed, laughing.

"Ramble? Me ramble? I can talk for the universe me, two universes even. Just listen to me talk, it's the best way of stalling a megalomaniac. Make them start and then they tell you everything. I've saved the world a few times by it. Just talk, talk, talk, me, never stop talking, all day and night. Though you should have heard my older brother, he used to talk all the time too, more than me. Mostly telling me off or lecturing me every time I got into trouble. I remember the time I almost got executed via vaporisation, they wouldn't let him come anywhere near me. When I got out of it I found a holo message waiting for me in the TARDIS, had to listen to it for weeks, he'd programmed it so it wouldn't shut off. Apparently father was having kittens over me nearly getting executed. Though would have liked to have seen that, I was rather fond of cats in that incarnation. He wasn't the worst though our Thalon, almost every time I got myself into trouble he was there to get me back out of it. I remember the time when I was in the academy and I used a Chula communication device to play loud music all over the academy, and every time they came close to tracking it, it would change frequency on them. When they eventually tracked it down, two weeks later, he took the blame for me to stop me from getting expelled. Was the only time he ever got into trouble in the academy, and since his grades were so brilliant they didn't want to get rid of him, so they gave him a slap on the wrist and told him not to do it again. Forgot about that until after we met, Jack." The Doctor sobered, "still they're all gone now." He took a long drink of the coke and changed the subject, "so what you doing here, Jack?"

Jack took the question for what it was and knew he'd get no more from him on the previous subject. They were privileged to even hear what they had since the Doctor never talked about himself. It's the first time he'd ever heard he'd had a brother or father, though logically he had to have had a father, it was just something he never really thought of. "Things have changed for the better since Canary Wharf now that Torchwood is out in the open, well as much as MI-5 at any rate. People know it exists but don't know exactly what its purpose is. We work closely with UNIT now. They where pissed that Yvonne Hartman was trying to take you prisoner and that has been changed in the charter officially and finally now as of last week. You're still listed as a UNIT employee, even on the pay-roll, did you know that?"

"Really?" The Doctor asked astonished. "Why?"

"For protection from people like Torchwood. As an alien if you where captured and experimented on by any organisation or country you could be dissected before they've finished debating the ethics and your rights through official channels. Since you're not technically human, human rights or the Geneva Convention can not be applied. But as a UNIT employee it gives you the rights of any other UNIT employee and gives UNIT the right to retrieve you immediately."

"Oh yeah the Geneva convention doesn't change to include Extra Terrestrials with sentient intelligence for another twenty years yet."

"The human race is only starting to meet other races from other worlds."

"It's an exciting time for humanity, the twenty-first century is when everything changes. Just wait till they find out about the Stargate that be a laugh and a half."

"Okay now you got to be having me on, Stargate is just a TV show," Martha stated.

"Well, it is a TV show yes, but it's also an elaborate way of covering up the truth. Stargates? Stargates are easy, we make them at school when we're children. Sure they made up a few things here and there on the show, but it's mostly true, like the Asgard. My people evolved from the ancients, as they call them, who by the way are a lot older than they have them on the show. I'm actually from billons of years in the future by your time scale. And Regeneration, it's a form of ascension, only we don't fully ascend. I should take you to Atlantis, you'll love it there."

"I was born in Atlantis," Jack added. "In the fifty-first century there's a colony there. Was tempted to go there one time when I was offered 'cause I have the gene and the clearance, but I declined. Probably change the timeline since I know too much about the city they haven't discovered yet."

"Is there really an activation gene? And is it really as rare as they say on the TV show?"

"Oh yes, I have it being a Time Lord and all, and we still used the ATA Gene technology. The TARDIS key will only work if you have it or I tell the TARDIS to let you in, or she just likes you. It's more common the more generations of humans come along. At this stage I'd say probably about six percent of the Earth's population, but by Jack's time it's stronger and seventy-five percent of humans have it. Rose had the strongest gene I'd ever seen in a human, the TARDIS practically rolled over and purred for her. You have it too coincidentally, and so does Tegan over there, the TARDIS liked her so much she opened up for her, and got her lost in the corridors first time we met, then she refused to let Tegan go. Was quite funny when I look back at it, every time I set the coordinates for Heathrow Airport we ended up somewhere else. She even took us back before it was built once. The old girl has a sense of humour like that."

"You and your TARDIS," Sarah Jane joked as she joined them at the table. "You treat her like she's alive."

"She is alive. Why is it that Rose and Jack are the only ones that ever get that. The two of you laughed at me for stroking the TARDIS, but she did it all the time too. Would catch her chatting to, and petting, the wall in her room all the time. I think they where conspiring against me. Rose was always giggling when she was doing it and everything she said was muddled, the TARDIS was definitely doing that deliberately, and I could feel the TARDIS' amusement. Anyway TARDISs are grown, they're not made like a machine. They are living, not quite breathing, and sometimes sentient, beings. They are supposed to have the intelligence of your average chimpanzee, but you got the occasional one that was more so and could override their commands and programming on a whim, and mine is one of them. She's particularly temperamental, has moods, likes and dislikes things and people. For example she hates the Master and loves me, and has gotten more and more set in her ways as she's gotten older, but she's my best friend, home and family, and I love her all the same.

"And I don't call her 'old girl' for nothing. She's a female TARDIS, there are males and females of the species. She even lost a child once, now she thinks I'm her kid..." He trailed off at the lump in his throat as that had made him think of Rose. The TARDIS thought it was time he found a mate and had been trying to set him up with first Sarah, then Romana, then Tegan, but most of all Rose. She loved Rose and mourned her loss as well, and seemed to think they where perfect together. Refused to go anywhere without her after their first adventure; she'd taken him to watch Rose's life as she grew up then brought him back to the spot where they had left her and said, through their telepathic link, that under no uncertain circumstances was she going anywhere without Rose. Even now she tended to drift off to her favourite spot in the Powell estate. Not for the first time he wondered what Rose was doing now.