Rose screams just as he does, your other (true) self, her cry of terror drowned in his wail of agony as the Reality Bomb shreds Time in his mind and rips threads of reality apart. You know the stabbing pain in your left ear is hardly worth a mention in the face of what the Bomb is doing to him.

Sarah Jane, never one for hysterics, now screams at an empty screen in place of Davros. Martha cries for her Doctor, while Mickey and Jackie mutely watch the scene in growing horror. Jack, well, Jack is livid; you can tell from the veins standing out on his neck, and from the way he's throwing himself at the wall, screaming murder at the Daleks who in turn have trained their weapons on him.

You couldn't have asked for a better diversion.

"Donna!" You hiss, and note belatedly that her eyes are pinched shut and her knuckles grind into her temple to relieve a present pain.

"Donna!"

Her eyes fly open and meet yours.

"What the hell is happening to me?"

"Time Lord brain," you explain feebly, wincing as a bolt of pain drives itself between your eyes and your other self shrieks in pain, crying out in mangled Gallifreyan.

"Is that why-?" She gestures at the Doctor, close to tears.

Not now, Donna, don't fall apart on me now. "Donna!"

She stumbles under another wave – you realize that the peaks must be coinciding with every planet blown apart – and when her eyes close again, you fear the stress of the Time Sense on her human brain is too great.

Then she straightens up, opens glowing eyes, and slides the sonic screwdriver from her pocket.

"Setting 2458; stabilize with dampners, add a twist of 91, disrupt the field, and…" she turns the knobs in one smooth motion, "voila!"

Jack falls forward, onto the smooth deck of the Vault.

If the Daleks had mouths, you would've given almost anything to see them hanging open.

"The hell-?"

"Prisoners have escaped!"

You give yourself a moment to beam at Donna before you run to the central console, catching the screwdriver she tosses to you mid-air, and slam your free hand into three grey buttons. A flick of the screwdriver sets the console sparking just as a Dalek turns its attention to you with a metallic screech.

"Exterminate!"

You smirk as its weapons click empty.

"Oh, I don't think so."

Jack launches himself into one of the Daleks and sends it careening into the others. Mickey grabs the three women with him and pushes them into a crevice in the wall, narrowly avoiding a Dalek that he then blinds by snapping the eyestalk askew with brutal force.

Donna runs to join you and you both hang onto the console as the ship shudders with a surge of power and a searing pain almost drops you both to your knees.

"Remember what I said earlier?" You grit your teeth and lock away the shadow of your Time Sense. "If we can re-program the Bomb with isomorphic parameters and set it loose on specific biological energy signatures, we can latch the beam onto the Daleks themselves, here take this-" Donna fumbles with the screwdriver settings, "- and then it's bye bye Daleks!"

"Doctor!"

You halt at Rose's scream, and you know, somehow you know, she is calling for you and not Him.

"Doctor!"

You turn to Donna, who nods and shoos you away with a gentle "I know what I'm doing." So you take her cue, her unspoken well wishes, and run.

You drop down next to Rose, who has been shielding her Doctor's prone form from the chaos of Jack, Mickey, and freewheeling unhappy Daleks. Tears smudge her makeup, but she's beautiful, just like you remembered.

The body on the floor arches weakly, a ragged cry tearing from his throat. Blood rills from his nose and drips toward the floor - she looks at you desperately.

"He's dying."

You nod slightly, but say nothing. For all your gift of talk, you are suddenly stuck with how to explain your/His Time Sense to her, that the very thing that set you apart as Time Lords is at this very moment splitting his mind open, dragging him into a fractured abyss as Time herself falls apart at the seams. That your/his Rose came back, to the End of all things, in time to watch him die. Twice.

His eyes suddenly snap open and you stare in at a face –your face– pale and smudged with tears and blood.

"Davros." He whispers.

You jump up and spin around to find a gun suddenly inches from your stomach.

"What did you do?!" The Dalek scientist howls. And you have no idea really, until Donna speaks.

"They deadlocked the Bomb controls, but I've managed to override the engine's regulatory systems and directed excessive power up to the fusion reactors. I'd hazard that even with the positive loop sustaining the Bomb's power output, it still needs the main controls to concentrate directionality and without that, the Bomb implodes. So guess what, Davros? This place is set to blow, and you're going down with your hulk of a ship, you bastard."

You stare at her, and can't quite decide if you should laugh or scream. A gun clicks from behind you, and you turn to see Jack leveling a Dalek gun at the half-man. Martha and Mickey have rounded up the Daleks like cattle rustlers, weapons trained on the confused beings, and you can't help but like that analogy.

"I think what Donna means to say is, you're a dead man, pal." Jack edges his way forward.

"Thank you, Jack. Doctor, we have ten minutes."

You eye the guns with no small amount of disdain, but Jack works fine with guns, and you have more pressing matters to attend to. You kneel down by Rose and the Doctor, and prepare to move him to the TARDIS when an incredible blast rocks the ship and sends everyone careening dangerously off-balance.

"Ah… Make that five minutes."

You pick yourself off the floor with a curse, shaking off the dizziness as more Time threads slip away. He looks worse, you think worriedly. Eyes unfocused yet preternaturally large; you can see where ocular capillaries have hemorrhaged under conjunctivae. But still he finds strength to bring a trembling hand up to the side of her head and splays long narrow fingers across her temple. In the Time that passes, too slowly, something unspoken transfers that dawns understanding in her eyes even as his flutter close.

"Rose," the Time Lord smiles beneath the pain, and she smiles back bravely and grips his hand.

"I know. I know."

Your gaze flits between the two of them.

"What?" You can only croak your question, but you know the look that passes over both their faces. You've seen it too many times.

"I'm sorry," he gasps, tears leaking from beneath bruised lids, his hand shaking violently, "I'm so sorry."

Light explodes in your eyes, and a lone howl echoes in the back of your mind.