The Last of the Time Lords.

The Story of the Time War.

" Here's the story, no one really knows how long the Time war lasted," The Doctor began, gazing at the two humans solemnly, hoping to keep his voice level and not give into his desire to lock the horrors of the war away in his head. " At first the war was simple to measure in terms of days, weeks," he looked down at his shoes. " It was seven years later that time began to become blurred by the effects of the war, and our sense of time no longer properly worked, so we can't tell. It didn't help both sides had time travel technology of incredibly advanced design."

The Doctor sighed, looked at Romana, as a thought occurred to him, and he shared it with her when she agreed, and then back at his audience. " First, I want us both," he gestured at Romana so she would back him up, " to give you the background of the war, and its origins, and that of the Time Lords themselves, just so you can understand what'd happened."

" As you've probably guessed, we're called Time Lords because of our mastery of time, but that's not it. It takes more than mastery of time and space travel to become Time Lords. Our homeworld was close to a temporal rift, a class 13 rift as opposed to the class 4 in Cardiff." The Doctor said, looking at Jack and Martha.

Jack breathed in shock. " You evolved near a temporal rift?" It explained so much, like where the Time Lords got their remarkable senses and insight into space and time. Theoretically, any race that evolved near a temporal rift had some of the universe pouring into their minds, affecting their bodies, and they also had unusual minds.

Romana nodded. " Yeah," she sighed. " Our ancestors evolved with time, and as the generations passed, each person was able to slow down the flow of time around them, able to peer into the future. It wasn't precognitive vision, but it was close. The visions combined with our people's already advanced intellect made us powerful, helped by a low level telepathy that exists to this day, as we can hear each other. " The Doctor and Romana shared a look, reminding themselves about the Master before Romana carried on. " What one Gallifreyan, as we weren't Time Lords then, were able to learn new technologies and sciences without the need to fight for it, and soon we were travelling the stars. Our society was advanced, with incredibly powerful hyperspace drives and genetic engineering, but then we discovered the concept of time travel. It intrigued us, considering our closeness to a temporal rift and our temporal insights."

" For the next thousand years, our people made experiments into temporal physics, slowing down time within a field, accelerating it into the past or the future, turning simple teleporters into basic time portals. Simple stuff. Then Omega and Rassilon stepped in." The Doctor steepled his fingers together. " Omega at the time was the foremost stellar engineer. He should be since he practically invented the field, and he'd been working on a means to blow suns up to create an everlasting supply of power, and originally he had nothing to do with time travel, unlike Rassilon, who'd personally made massive breakthroughs with time technology, but the two found common purpose as the experiments were creating a steadily increasing demand for power, so they worked together with the common goal of developing a fully functional time machine. At that point in history, loads of similar technology existed, but they were basic in design. They ripped holes in the fabric of time, and Rassilon captured a few to make a few experiments to build from to discover more of temporal physics, but he left them alone after a while."

Romana took over the story. " To cut a long story short, Rassilon and Omega worked together on a developing a stable wormhole, and loop it around the universe after they discovered the basics of quantum mnenomics, the science of the basic structure of the universe. We call them Block Transfer computations. They're mathematical formulae that can change the fabric of time and space."

" To create the wormhole," the Doctor said, " they detonated a dying sun, doubling the explosion. With work, they used a combination of block transfers and wormhole physics to create the wormhole, and as the nova became a black hole the nucleus was captured and taken back to Gallifrey, and became the Eye of Harmony, which became the power source of the Time Lords, and later TARDISes."

Romana smirked. " You didn't really believe TARDISes refuelled on time rifts, did you?" Then her voice became more solemn as she recalled the events of history. " Except Omega fell into the black hole," Romana said grimly, " lost into an antimatter universe until the war began, and he was freed."

Martha was about to ask something, but the Doctor stopped her. " Let's please finish this part before you ask any more questions, okay? The wormhole was laced with dark matter and gravitational energy from the Eye of Harmony, but the wormhole was narrow. It was twice as wide as the tunnels on the London Underground, and the massive amounts of energy were able to keep it open meant that it couldn't be widened. The time vortex was born," the Doctor was interrupted.

" Hold on, the Time vortex is artificial?" Jack asked, stunned. It made sense about why the Time Lords had that title, but he'd never imagined it was like that.

The Doctor nodded, and Romana stood up to bring up an image of the scanner. An image recognisable to the Time Lords as the Seal of the Time lords of Gallifrey appeared on the screen.

" This is the seal of the Time Lords," Romana said, tapping in another sequence, this one showing a view of the universe, with the same outline of the seal superimposed in blue, with little branches like the roots of a tree branching out of the rings of the vortex wormhole. " And this is the Time vortex."

" Our creation. A massive universe wide wormhole, with no outward connection, outside time and space." The Doctor rubbed his eyes. " We'd more or less become the Lords of time, but we still had problems. At that point, our knowledge of the vortex, and what was inside it, was a concern. We probed the vortex, and we discovered nothing large could enter it. A test ship found that out, quickly."

" What happened to it?" Martha asked, though Jack had a good idea himself.

Romana's answer was simple. " It was only a shuttle, but it disintegrated. The amount of gravitational energy tore the thing apart."

" Hence why we've built ships like this one," The Doctor opened his arms to encompass the whole console room. " Held in another dimension with the engines inside, keeping the crew safe inside in what would be very small confines, the TARDIS became the epitome of time travel technology. It sounds easy, but there were many models built to make it right."

The Doctor and Romana were silent, processing through their minds what to say next. Finally the Doctor spoke in a quiet tone. " Whether by political acclaim or popularity, more likely the former, Rassilon set up the traditions of the Time Lords, and he created the web of time. To the general populace, the web is held inside a pocket inside the vortex, designed to control history, but it had a more sinister function. Rassilon had a problem with developing races who might one day come to threaten the Time Lord's supremacy over the cosmos, so the web was designed to rig the competition."

" He destroyed races that might be better than his own?" Martha asked horrified, and for a moment she and Jack thought of their own race, how humanity could oppose the Time Lords, only to find themselves destroyed.

The Doctor nodded grimly, answering Martha's question, but making it appear to the two humans he'd been listening into Martha's dark thoughts.

" For millions of years our people travelled the universe, moving from one planet after another, mapping the cosmos, and assimilating all kinds of knowledge from the various worlds. At the same time, we asked questions, and the universe answered them."

Romana smirked at the poetic line. " Very poetic, Doctor." She nudged him teasingly.

The Doctor grinned at the compliment, and his eyes became almost wistful. " We called that time the Age of Exploration." He sighed, the wistful look in his gaze more and more pronounced. " Ah, the Age of Exploration, how I wish I'd been born then, in a time when the Time Lords actually went out there into the universe and explored."

" But you weren't born then, were you?" Martha knew she was stating the obvious.

Romana shook her head. " Neither of us were, Martha." She looked down at her feet. " We were born ten million years later. By that time the Age of Exploration was finished, and our people believed we'd gathered all the knowledge we could. We still created TARDISes and other pieces of technology, but we only did it once every fifty or seventy years."

Jack and Martha couldn't believe that a species as powerful as the Time Lords would wait that long to improve their technology. Even the higher lifeforms, and the more advanced cultures Jack had met on his own travels had been more or less complacent, but not as much as the Time Lords seemed to be.

As someone born in the 51st century, Jack had attended dozens of archaeological seminars by professors like River Song, Zabbandar O'licr about powerful empires who'd fallen into decay because they'd failed to adapt. This story was sounding like the Time Lords had ignored universal history, and gone down the slippery slope. No wonder the Daleks had managed to cause massive destruction.

The Doctor and Romana didn't seem to notice Jack's thoughts wander, so they carried on, or rather the Doctor did. " Gallifrey was protected by transduction barriers, temporal barriers that pushed our people outside time and space, and into a small pocket reality. Aside from the other temporal powers like the Monan Host and others, and a few scattered rumours and folklore legends, no one truly knew of us. But that didn't mean we didn't make contributions to galactic history. The destruction of the Great Vampires and the Racnoss spring to mind."

Jack pointed out something that surprised the Doctor. " A Racnoss web attacked Earth, but it was destroyed."

The Doctor swung round to look at Romana, stunned. The Time Lady nodded. " I killed the brood. I'll tell you later," she added, seeing his confused look.

Nodding at her wearily, but wondering just what had happened to her on her travels, the Doctor carried on. " It was when we encountered the Minyans of Minyos that we changed our policy. Before that we were unsure how to proceed, whether we should enter intergalactic affairs or not, but the Minyan incident answered it."

From the way the Doctor and Romana slumped forward, their faces anything but happy, both Jack and Martha had an educated guess about what had happened to the Minyans.

" The Minyans were a primitive race, but when we appeared to them they worshipped us like gods, which as you can imagine was flattering." The Doctor said. " We showed them the wheel, fire, medicine, the toothbrush, and eventually nuclear power. Over the centuries there was a growing movement, for every Minyan who worshipped the Time Lords, there was a hundred who hated and feared us."

Romana took up the grim tale. " They attacked our bases, taking our people by surprise, but we fought them back and they fled with heavy losses. The damage, though, was done, and only a handful of Time Lords returned to Gallifrey. We had the power to destroy Minyos, but we didn't. Our Lord President at the time made the prophecy, using the Minyans latent aggressiveness to logically state they would destroy themselves, and they did. The destruction of the Minyans resulted in the Time Lords erasing our presence from universal records, which is why so few know of us," she added for Jack.

The Doctor decided not to mention he'd met and helped some Minyans during his fourth incarnation, this story was too important to focus on so many disjointed topics.

" With the policy of non-intervention," Romana carried on, " the Time Lords only travelled on small and routine research missions, but there were some Time Lords who left for the hell of it." She turned to look at the Time Lord next to her. The Doctor grinned sheepishly. " Okay, I was one of those Time Lords, but can you blame me? Time Lord life on Gallifrey's a mix of duty and boredom. There's no social life, nothing. I was bored. What's the point of having near immortality if you don't live a little? What's the point in space/time travel if you don't actually travel?

" I stole this TARDIS, and began my travels, but eventually I was caught by the Time Lords." Here the Doctor's face darkened. " A member of my race had been helping a race called the War Lords kidnap human soldiers from various times on Earth, all the way up to World war one. They didn't go any higher because that meant a more advanced knowledge of technology."

" Hold on," Martha held up a hand to stop the Doctor, disbelief and horror on her face. " A Time Lord helped these people? Why?"

" To form an army to control the universe, to them humans were the most aggressive race in the universe." The Doctor replied. " In a way, he was right, but that didn't mean I had to like it. Their methods were shoddy, too. They used a form of TARDIS which was one of the most basic kinds, and believe me when I say I was disturbed when I stood inside one. At the time I was still on the run from the Time Lords. They used brutal mental conditioning, but it wasn't always effective, and was often reinforced with the use of a special form of eyeglasses the officers of the War Lords used when they went into disguise to control the human soldiers, but again it wasn't effective. The time zones were closed off behind mists to provide cover, but sometimes a soldier whose conditioning failed found themselves in another time, where they were killed off quickly to preserve their cover.

" When me and my companions at the time found out the truth, we quickly joined. I did my best to adapt a mental conditioning machine I'd captured, but I was captured myself before I could make a truly viable plan to fight the War Lords. I found out they were prepared to drop a neutron bomb on my friends, so I pretended to betray them. To cut a long story short, I was able with their help to shut down their scheme."

The Doctor looked uncomfortable. " I'd made a promise to help them get home, but I found their TARDIS travel machines were breaking down, so I had to make a choice. My freedom, or their lives. I chose them. I called my people, and by the time I got back to my TARDIS it was too late. I tried to elude the Time Lords, but they dragged me back to Gallifrey, where the leader of the War Lords was put on trial."

Romana placed her hand on his forearm, offering him support. She knew his past, knew how this trial would shape his future interaction with their people, but she also knew it was a painful time for him too, especially how Zoe and Jamie were sent back after their first adventure with the Doctor with their memories erased. His companions and the memories they left behind left their mark on the Doctor, and Jamie and Zoe were no different. Jamie had been an integral part of the Second Doctor's life and adventures, and Zoe had shown the Time Lord he was sometimes not as clever as he liked to think, but he'd adored her anyway, like a father would a daughter.

The Doctor smiled at her, pleased she was there for him. It hurt to think of Jamie and Zoe, he'd tried to tell them not to come with him in the TARDIS when he'd summoned the Time Lords after finishing up with the War games, but they hadn't listened. He'd known if they'd come with him they would be sent home with their memories erased. The Doctor doubted even if he'd told any of his companions about the danger they would've listened. The memory of the hurt confusion on Jamie's face as he watched his friend give into the Time Lords, Zoe's almost childlike sorrow as she said goodbye...That was painful, especially considering how far Zoe had risen from being a social reject in her century for being scarrily intelligent, to a fun loving young woman that the Doctor loved seeing smile.

The memory of them waving before they stepped into the programmed TARDIS to take them home, and the Time Lord who reassured the Doctor they wouldn't entirely forget him...etched into his mind, forever.

" The War Lord...well, he played for time," The Doctor managed to get out. " The Time Lords got him to speak because he underestimated what we're capable of. The Time Lord holding a trial against another species is almost unheard of, and that was the first time I ever saw one."

" Why?"

Romana answered Martha's question, seeing how distraught her friend was. " Normally we didn't interfere with the affairs of others, but the War Lord's actions changed that when he used our science to try and conquer the galaxy. Time travel produces all kinds of interference in the space/time continuum, and with the right form of monitoring its possible to control it." She took a breath. " When the War Chief gave the War Lord access to Time Lord technology, he made us responsible. The War Chief's fate, if he'd survived, was preordained. He'd have been vapourised, and the War Lord would have seen it, but since the War Lord ordered his execution it couldn't happen."

The Doctor sneered. " The War Lord basically told the Time Lords they were responsible for the whole thing, in a way he was right, but the Time Lords never sponsored it. Like Romana said about the War Chief, his fate was preordained. Our people took a very harsh approach to punishing time meddling. It didn't help when Gallifrey was infiltrated by the guards from the War Lord homeworld. They killed two Time Lords, the first time such a thing ever happened on our planet, in 10 million years of our reign over time.

" The War Lord took the guard's arrival as an omen, and he threatened the Time Lords, not a good move considering we were in comparison a giant to their grain of dust, and he tried to escape, taking me and my companions with him as hostages. It didn't work because I managed to activate the TARDIS security system. The Time Lords waited for us outside, and the War Lord came out ordering his thugs to kill us, but a forcefield immobilised them."

A grim smile of satisfaction appeared on his face, chilling Martha and Jack.

" A time loop was generated around the War Lord planet, imprisoning them forever, but the War Lord's fate was worse. Temporal dissolution, he literally never existed, just like his guards."

Martha clapped a hand to her face. " That's horrible!"

Romana's eyes were cold, just like the Doctor's. They had no problem with what happened, especially the Doctor, who'd known the War Lord, held at gunpoint by his guards, forced to listen as the despot tried to regain control on the war game planet when the resistence with his help made everything spiral out of control.

To the Time Lord's what happened was another example of what happened to those who got on the wrong side of the Time Lords.

The Doctor, seeing the human's emotions, decided to change the subject, but not going into the details of his exile just yet, he wanted to make his point first. " The encounter with the War Lords, and being back home for the first time in a few hundred years, made me see a problem with the Time Lords; we'd become too complacent. I just wish it hadn't taken two lives to make me see that, but for our people it was like nothing had happened. There was no change to our security, nothing."

The Doctor sighed, dreading the subject he was about to broach. " After being put on trial after the War Lord, I was exiled to Earth. My TARDIS knowledge was taken from me, and my appearance was changed." The Doctor's face became darker, and Romana wrapped him in a hug. He returned the hug gratefully. " I worked day and night, trying to find a way to bypass what they'd done to me, and to my ship." The Doctor looked around the console room.

" A few years after I arrived, I received a message from the Time Lords." A scowl appeared on his face. " The Master had come to Earth, and he wanted to get revenge."

" For what?" Martha asked.

The Doctor sighed. " It doesn't matter now," he replied hoping she'd drop it. It was important these two got an idea of what his people had been like before the war. He was surprised it was easier to speak about the Time Lords before the war, maybe it was because his people had been peaceful and not war mongering savages. " I worked for UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce as their scientific advisor. With their help, I was able to stop dozens of alien invasions."

Jack nodded. " I've encountered UNIT before, Doctor. Good people."

The Doctor nodded, but Romana frowned at her old companion. How did he know UNIT, and what the hell had he been doing for the last hundred years? This latest revelation was another question she'd have to ask Jack later, but not now.

" Yeah, but the Master often tested them." The Doctor replied, looking down at his hands. He silent for a moment, gathering his thoughts. " Not long after the Master first came to Earth, I managed to make, what I thought then, was a breakthrough with my repairs to the TARDIS. My exile had brought an unparalleled opportunity for me to study the time machine, and repair it."

" You didn't know anything about your own machine?" Jack asked stunned.

" You couldn't work it right?" Martha added.

Romana had to stop herself from laughing. The Doctor's inability to properly control his TARDIS was a running joke amongst the Time Lords. The Doctor glared at her, knowing what she was thinking. He turned to the humans. " TARDIS technology had never been my strong suit at the Academy," he said as he tried to justify his lack of knowledge back then. " I stole the TARDIS because it wasn't one of the most heavily guarded ones."

" Oh, so that's why you stole the TARDIS so easily," Romana nodded in comprehension.

The Doctor shook himself out of the direction the conversation had taken. " Gallifrey had this matrix, a computer system that stored all their knowledge," the Doctor paused, he knew his description of the matrix wasn't perfect, but it was the best description he could come up with, " and the Master had broken into it. He managed to remove quite a few files. One was about the Sea Devils, a colony of the race that ruled the Earth before your race evolved. Anyway," he added, holding up his hand to stop Martha from asking anymore questions; the Doctor could see Martha's inability to wait and see and always ask questions would slow him down as he explained what the Time War was all about. He wanted to get this out of the way. " The Master had stolen a report on the Exarian Doomsday weapon, it can convert suns into supernovas. I managed to persuade the keeper of the weapon from handing it over to the Master. He destroyed it, along with his race." He looked down sadly, even if the incident had stopped the Master's plan of carving an empire out of ashes it had resulted in the destruction of an entire race.

Martha had heard of genocide before, but the Doctor had just described how he'd practically ordered it to happen. Romana heard the thoughts in her head, and frowned. " It didn't happen like that, Martha," she warned, knowing how judgemental the doctor in training could be. " The Exarians had been a powerful race once, but their society had begun to decay and degenerate. By the time the Doctor and the Master arrived, the whole planet was virtually dead, and there was a colony of struggling humans there trying to make a decent life for themselves, but the power source of the weapon was poisoning the soil of the planet. The Exarians asked the Doctor to destroy them, not the other way around."

Martha didn't like the contradiction to what the Doctor had said. " He said-"

" Persuade the keeper of the weapon from handing it over to the Master, I didn't say anything about them killing themselves." The Doctor interrupted. He hadn't been surprised by Romana's detailed knowledge of what had happened before she'd met him, the Matrix contained knowledge about all the Time Lords, and Romana had said she'd studied his biography before joining him to search for the Key to Time. " Besides the weapon had brought nothing but harm to the Exarians, it had poisoned them. They worshipped the bloody thing, even made sacrifices to it. The Keeper had had enough of it, when the Master came he realised if his people died then it would be used in ways the Exarians would have never wanted. Besides it gave him the excuse to end the Exarians' history."

The Doctor glared at the now uncomfortable Martha. She knew she had a problem with judging people before she'd gotten the full story. Jack, sensing the tension, spoke up. " What else, Doc?"

The Doctor turned his glare to the former time agent. " Don't call me Doc!" He retorted, yelping in surprise when Romana elbowed him none too softly. Romana was nonchalent when she saw the glare turned in her direction. " Get on with it, please."

Realising he'd spent too long not getting to the point, the Doctor nodded. " The Master breaking into the matrix changed nothing for Time Lord security, just like it did when I tricked the Vardans into invading Gallifrey." Romana had to laugh at the looks on her companion's faces.

Jack had to double check what he'd heard, he had to be imagining what he'd heard. " You helped an alien race invade Gallifrey, your homeplanet?" The time agent asked.

The Doctor nodded. " Why?" Jack asked.

For a while the Doctor didn't reply, but when he spoke his voice demanded silence, even from Romana who rembembered the incident despite it not really affecting her during her final year at the Prydonian Academy.

" Like I said when I described what happened with the War Lords, I'd noticed just how my people had become complacent, especially when dealing with difficult situations," The Doctor turned to Romana. He knew she knew their people hadn't taken the Time War seriously until it was far too late, even when the Daleks had sabotaged her earlier work with the temporal powers the Time Lords had done little in the aftermath even when dozens of their people had been killed. Still looking at Romana, the Doctor carried on, seeming to be apologetic at the same time for reasons beyond Martha's ability to understand.

" I set up a little game," he said, though when his mouth said the word game it sounded just wrong, but it seemed like the best word he could pick out of his vocabulary. " I set myself up as president, and once my induction was more or less finished, I would bring the Vardans through. The whole point was to shake the Time Lords up, and say to them the universe was moving whilst we weren't." He sighed. " I worked with the Vardans, and when I revealed them to the High Council, there was no reaction. Nothing. Even when another enemy came to Gallifrey, the general population was apathetic."

Romana nodded. " The new regime, brief as it was, went unnoticed, but it made people speak about the Doctor more. He was a legend during my time at the Academy, how he'd rebelled against the Time Lords, and stole the TARDIS."

Jack was struggling to understand the stupidity of the Time Lords. The Higher races still spoke of the Time Lords, the Monan Host certainly spoke about the more powerful race of time travellers. He knew the Time Lords from whispers, rumours, and legends spanning space and time, but those were still whispers. It wasn't until he'd met Romana, a real person from that legendary and mythical species that he'd gained some answers. What Jack could not believe was that a species who'd gone to so much trouble to create a universe spanning wormhole would simply turn their backs and ignore the rest of the universe.

It was madness.

The former Time agent looked closely at the tired Time Lord sitting beside Romana, how the Time Lady was wrapped around him. As someone genetically engineered to give out strong pheromones and desired sex, Jack could see the attraction between the Doctor and Romana, and that was even before he and Martha had seen them kiss.

But he was still stunned by how stupid the Time Lords were to just stand by and watch as their planet was invaded. Shaking his head, Jack looked straight at the Doctor.

" Doctor," he said, keeping silent until the Time Lord looked him in the eye. Jack ignored it when he visibly winced. " Who was this other enemy?"

The Doctor's voice was grim.

" Sontarans. They sent a whole battlefleet. They used the Vardans because of their superior technical superiority to get to Gallifrey. I didn't know about them until it was too late."

Martha looked between the solemn Time Lords and the shocked time agent, and frowned. " Who are the Sontarans?"

" The finest warriors you'll ever find," the Doctor sat back. " A clone race, with the weakness of a small hole at the back of their necks, but they see it as a strength because they have to always face their enemies. The Vardans would never have been able to fight them properly, the Sontarans are too strong."

Something occured to Jack.

" Romana, the Sontarans are always on the lookout for time travel technology. Did they attack Gallifrey for your races technology, and did they fight in the Time War?"

One time when Jack had been part of the agency, he and another agent had travelled back in time when the timeline sensors had detected a serious deviant. When they got there they found a couple of Sontarans from a scout fighter. They'd crashed on the planet, and they carelessly looked into the future for slave labour and higher technology to repair their ship and to attack the Rutans because the planet was so close to the frontlines.

Jack remembered how they'd captured him and his partner, and showed interest in the vortex manipulators. He wasn't surprised, Osmic projects was crude, impractical and dangerous.

Somehow he wasn't surprised to discover the Sontarans had known about the Time Lords, so it was possible some of their plans and operations revolved around acquiring time travel technology, and very high grade at that.

If the Sontarans knew of the Time Lords, then they certainly knew of the Time war...

" Answering your questions in order. Yes, the Sontarans attacked Gallifrey for our technology, and no they didn't fight in the Time war." Romana replied.

The Doctor nodded, agreeing with Romana. " The Sontarans have tried to get their hands on time travel technology for a long time. They sponsored experiments on Space Station Chimmera in the Third Zone for a space and time machine. Something far more sophisticated than the pieces of junk the Sontarans used, but the Time Lords sent me to stop them because of the dangerous levels of energy they were releasing, affecting the fabric of space/time. When the Time war came around, many of the battles took place in space, and they attracted the attention of races like the Sontarans and their enemies, the Rutans. Both races were interested in joining the fight, but both the Time Lords and the Daleks agreed against it."

" Why?" Martha asked, folding her arms. " If both sides have fighting each other for-"

" 50,000 years," Jack put in helpfully.

Martha looked at him stunned by the figure. " They...fought for 50,000 years?"

Jack nodded grimly. " They still do," he said grimly. He'd seen the results of Sontaran-Rutan battles, planets blackened, ruined, whole cities of innocent people slaughtered because they were caught in the middle.

" If one side had joined in the Time war, then the other side would've join the opposite." The Doctor replied grimly, answering Martha's original question. " The Time war was bad enough without having a separate war fighting alongside. The Daleks knew that, and it was one of the few things we agreed on, to keep the Sontarans and Rutans out of it."

Martha bit her lip, thinking about it. She nodded, seeing the logic. " Okay," she sighed. " How did the war start?"

The Doctor sighed. " The Time Lords had been growing concerned. We foresaw a time where the Daleks would have destroyed all forms of life in the universe, and become the dominant species. It was a feasible possibility, I'd already fought the Daleks, and their empire was always expanding. There was always a number of wars that required tremendous supplies of chemicals and metals, not to mention adequate slave labour." The Time Lord looked down at his feet. " I saw two invasions of your planet Martha, one where the Daleks had attacked directly, and another in a defunct timeline. The Daleks forced humanity into a slave race, digging up your planet for raw materials to keep the Dalek Empire going."

Romana touched the Doctor's mind, urging him to get to the point.

" The Time Lords were also becoming concerned by how the Daleks were studying time travel, how they used it to conquer planets, and even going back in time to avert defeats." The Doctor sighed, guilt and self recrimination tearing him to shreds. " I was sent back in time to a point where the Daleks were about to be created."

" The Time Lords wanted your to avert their creation." Jack nodded. It made sense, but what didn't make sense was the failure. The Daleks had still been created.

" Or affect their genetic development to make them less aggressive," the Doctor agreed. " I failed to make much of a difference, and what difference I made was not the type I wanted."

He closed his eyes.

" Why, what happened?" Martha asked.

The Doctor opened his eyes, glaring into space. When he spoke his voice may have been spoken from afar. " Davros, the evil thing who created the Daleks, took our being there as a sign. A sign his creations were meant for great things, if aliens form the future were trying to meddle in their development." The Doctor sighed in exhaustion. " My meddling had created a new timeline to the original. In the original, the Daleks had exploded a neutron bomb to destroy their enemies on the planet. They built a city, convinced they were the supreme beings of the planet Skaro. To those particular Daleks there was no such thing as life on other worlds, but then I arrived and changed that.

" When they discovered there was life elsewhere, the Daleks sought to conquer them." The Doctor's dead eyes turned to Martha, who shivered when their eyes met. " The Daleks conquered Earth at that time."

He looked down at his feet again, lost in his thoughts. " In the new timeline, Davros reprogrammed his Daleks in preparation to conquer the planets he now knew were inhabited. He removed several key limitations the Daleks had suffered from, the most notable was their power problem. Originally the Daleks were powered by static electricity through charged metal flooring. Davros changed that, gave them cosmic powering that the Daleks in the original timeline would never develop for centuries. When I left, Davros had made a couple of mistakes. One was when he programmed their genetic matrix, he programmed them to believe all other races were inferior, and to exterminate them. He forgot he was, to his creations, inferior. They shot him, but he survived. Survived to lead in the Time War. The second mistake was the Daleks themselves. Davros made the Daleks in this new timeline so logical, so mechanical that they forgot their own organic heritage. This way of thinking slowed them down to a massive extent, and some of their wars in the original timeline never happened, or if they did then their logical thinking got in the way."

Neither Romana or the Doctor had any intention of mentioning the war with the Movellans. " The Daleks somehow discovered the Time Lord's meddling in their development," the Doctor said instead. " They began waging a cold war with us, even going so far as to try and kidnap me and my companions at the time, to send us back to Gallifrey to open the planet up for invasion. I got back at them for tricking Davros into destroying Skaro's sun, but the planet survived."

The Doctor wanted to get to the war itself, but he didn't know how. Romana took the initiative.

" The Time war began with a number of attacks in the time vortex. The TARDISes were captured by the Daleks, and the Time Lords were killed or tortured for information. It's believed the Daleks had already got hold of an old TARDIS, a Type 36, and developed from it. They also managed to steal certain files from our matrix, and they developed from them. With those files came knowledge and information about certain dangerous artefacts left behind over the aeons by powerful races. Artefacts the Daleks could use."

The Doctor nodded. " Despite being old and crude compared to our later models, the Type 36 and under were far more advanced than the pieces of crap the Daleks used." He looked surprised at his language as it wasn't common for him. He turned to Romana. She was grinning cheekily despite the current topic. " I see this one has a foul mouth," she smirked. " I love it." Romana leant in and captured his lips, and he too leant closer to properly kiss her.

They were just getting in their stride, too, when Jack coughed. " Later guys, the story." The two Time Lords broke apart, nonplussed. Romana sent him a smirk, and a telepathic message. Later, Doctor. The Doctor smiled back, using one of his fingers to stroke her face, eliciting a smile. Looking forward to it, Romana.

Reluctantly they broke away, the Doctor sitting up whilst Romana looked demure like nothing had happened. " The Time Lords sent a diplomatic envoy to Skaro, against my wishes I might add," Romana hissed the last part. The Doctor put a hand on her shoulder, and she relaxed, giving him a grateful look.

" What would you have to do with it?" Martha asked.

Romana glowered angrily, but not at Martha. Her anger was directed at the incompetent fools who'd sat in the Council chamber back home.

" I was the Lady President of Gallifrey," she took delight in stunning the human. " Under my leadership we'd been preparing for a war," Romana ignored the disagreeing snort from the Doctor. She knew how he'd hated being chased through time and space because of Compassion being a living TARDIS, but she'd had no other choice. " Only I got it wrong. It was the Daleks we were going to fight. We'd known about the impending war for a long time, but we had no idea we'd get it so wrong."

" We found out, though, when the Daleks sent a corpse of one of the Time Lords back for us to find, only for the body to explode in a fusion blast," The Doctor pointed out grimly. He looked at the two humans. " The explosion destroyed a large portion of the Capitol, our city, and a Dalek battlefleet launched a massive attack on Gallifrey itself, getting past our defences as easily as if they weren't there. They used nuclear weapons, frying massive areas of the planet in nuclear fire. After that the Time Lord's declared war. It was the only thing we could do."

He looked down at his hands.

Romana's voice was quiet. " We sent out a call for all our people offworld, to come and help us fight." She looked down. " None of us wanted to, the Time Lord race had been at peace for centuries. None of us knew the first thing about war, but we tried."

" For the first year, the Time Lords didn't concern themselves much with the war," the Doctor said darkly. " We thought, since we'd defeated enemies in the past, the Daleks would be easy. They ignored the counsel of those who'd met the Daleks, fought them again and again. We could destroy one Dalek army, only for seven more to take their place. The Time Lords began taking the war seriously enough when the Daleks started going for the higher races more powerful artefacts, including our own. Dalek scientists and warriors were sent to them to take control, and use them as weapons to use in the war."

" To slow us down, the Daleks routinely sent their ships and time vessels on kamikaze missions," Romana added. " They even developed an Attero device."

" They didn't?" Jack breathed.

Martha looked between the time agent and the Time Lords, confused. " What's an Attero device?"

The Doctor sighed. " Attero, in Latin, means " I destroy" or I weaken," they're basically devices that generate a dangerous type of interference that interferes in the basic operations of a ships propulsion. In the case of the Time War, the Daleks used the frequency of a TARDIS'S dematerialisation or rematerialisation, and the TARDIS would explode, killing the Time Lords inside them."

Romana and the Doctor looked sad. " It took seven years before we could properly find and destroy the Attero device. It was phased in and out of the Time Vortex. In that time, the Time Lords had started to recognise how serious the war was. With our TARDIS and time technology immobilised, the Daleks were able to launch vicious assaults on Gallifrey, and many of our people were stranded off world, fighting the Daleks. Some races pitched into help, the Monan Host for instance. Their powerful ships were able to help us with our operations, but we had to be careful. The Monan Host wanted to remain strictly neutral, if one of their ships was found then the Daleks would turn their attentions towards them."

" By the time the device had been destroyed," the Doctor continued, " an estimate of over 3,000 Time Lords and Ladies, many of them half trained soldiers, were killed. By then we'd started developing weapons to take on the Daleks themselves. The Rani developed a number of viruses to attack Dalek casings. A device that would act like a neutron bomb, but destroy the targetted DNA. We changed the travel frequencies of the TARDISes to random, so another Attero device would never be used again."

" We started destroying suns, converting them into black holes near Dalek facilities; labs, shipyards, factory complexes, the lot. The Daleks laid traps for us, and after falling for them where hundreds of us died, we began making traps of our own. We started rigging our artefacts the Daleks were going after, to explode and take them with it. We weren't going to let our history be tarnished, not by the Daleks." Romana said.

For a moment both Time Lords fell silent, but Martha grew impatient very quickly.

" Go on, what happened then?"

The Doctor and Romana looked at one another. " You have to understand, Martha, that in a Time War, time itself is a weapon." Romana said. " We started by rewriting time, creating multiple timelines, and trying to force some of them."

The Doctor nodded. He hadn't approved of that, but it had worked on more than one occasion. " At first the timelines written were to allow us greater latitude in the war, to help us win. Whenever the Daleks developed some new superweapon, and used in during the war, we would simply program time to simply erase it, or make it less powerful. Unfortunately those casings the Daleks used had been modified with Time Lord technology and science to allow them to see multiple timelines, so the idea fell flat. But paradoxes were used against them, to wipe out key and important events in history."

" But the Daleks had developed the means and the power to create and force alternate realities," Romana said. " We had to send a number of Time Lords back through time to ensure the new events never happened."

The Doctor smiled though it didn't reach his eyes. " I don't know how many alternate timelines I found, where the Daleks tried to kill me and my family, preventing my birth, but I was delighted when I found and destroyed their reality manipulator.

Romana added. " And we managed to create a timeline loop to prevent the Daleks from creating another one."

Martha and Jack had been growing quite stunned by how the pair of them finished each others sentences, almost as if they time it. " Timeline loop?" Martha asked.

The Doctor smiled, and held out his hands, and made a figure eight with a few lines through it. " A time loop is where you pass continually through the same points through time, but a timeline loop is where there is no way out. It also creates a very basic but powerful timelock to prevent anyone from breaking through."

Romana glanced at him, then she carried on. " In the very first year of the Time war, Davros the creator of the Daleks was lost to the Nightmare Child, and the Attero device had been activated, but I count twenty years later the war had become incredibly complex."

The Doctor stood up. " I think we should take this to the kitchens. I'm thirsty, and I need a cuppa."

Romana stood up as well. " Definitely."

The two humans watched as the Time Lords marched out, and they shrugged and followed.


Nursing their teas, the Doctor and Romana carried on with their grim tale of the Time War. The Doctor sipped his tea, apparently in no hurry to speak. Romana took the hot seat.

" The Time Lords realised we needed spies in the war, and none of our people could be sent without discovery and extermination. We managed to infiltrate a few Dalek factories, and we reprogrammed the mutants genetic structure to make them obey us. We gave them a simple directive, to fight against the Daleks."

" Only we didn't know what the consequences would be," the Doctor set down his mug. " I was on that mission. I added the human factor, the total opposite of the Dalek factor, the distillation of everything that makes a Dalek a Dalek. The Daleks had once captured me with the intention of spreading the Dalek factor through human history, essentially making humans into Daleks. Anyway I passed the factor on, and the Daleks caused massive chaos within the Empire and they began fighting each other on their planets, and on the frontlines. It wasn't exactly the mission directive, but the reprogrammed Daleks were able to move undetected to carry out their spying missions."

The Doctor smiled. " I later, with the Rani and Drax's help, managed to create a device that would generate a wave through the time vortex, to every Dalek in the universe. It mixed a part of the human factor into the unsuspecting mind of the Daleks, and make them conflicted. Eventually they killed themselves when they realised they'd 'become contaminated." He mimicked a Dalek's voice.

Romana hit him on the arm. " I loved that one. It was nice seeing the Daleks lose some of that superiority complex, and become more playful."

The Doctor grinned, then it fell off as quickly as a raindrop on glass. " It didn't work, though," he took a sip of his tea before he carried on. " The Dalek emperor, seeing what was about to happen, but helpless to prevent it, hid inside a pocket universe with a massive and growing Dalek army. They identified what I'd done, and made themselves immune. The time between the Emperor's reemergence into the war, and the two factors working against one another was long enough to give us a respite. When the war came back, we were unprepared."

" Matters grew worse," Romana said grimly. The others looked at her, and she looked down at her milky tea. " I was fighting off world, something I did regularly. The High council of the Time Lords were useless at the best of times, but during the war they were even worse. They continuously refused to send reinforcements, sponsored weapon and scientific ideas that made no difference to the outcome of the war, so I often found myself leaving them to fight alongside my people. I was always protected, but the High Council saw me as a renegade, not a president.

" They made a plan without my knowledge. This is where the Master comes in. Time Lords have twelve regenerations, thirteen lives before we die completely, and the Master had used his up. He was continuously looking for new ways to prolong his life, eventually he tried to steal the Doctor's regenerations. He failed, and he was believed to have fallen into the Eye of Harmony inside this TARDIS. His mind survived, and the Time Lords brought him back, gave him a cloned body, and made him the perfect warrior for the war."

Romana sighed, and looked and felt physically and mentally weaker than ever. " I got back just in time for the Master to be sent to the frontlines, and I met him briefly. He didn't say a word, he just left. I was furious. I demanded the truth, and the High Council revealed it in the shape of someone I hadn't expected."

The Doctor took her hand. He knew where she was going with this. " The High Council had now decided to resurrect the dead," Romana said. " The ease by which they brought the Master back to life made them see that deceased Time Lords could help, and they started bringing back Time Lords who'd died thousands of years before, and even later. Some of them were renegades, mavericks, and their contributions was more than a help."

The Time Lady shook her head, shaking her brunette hair side to side. " The Resurrection project wasn't a total success; the Master had been sent on a vital mission to safeguard the Cruciform. Vortex knows how the Daleks found out about it, they probably learnt about it via the captured records they'd stolen. Anyway the Master had been sent to ensure it never fell into Dalek hands."

" It fell, anyway," The Doctor said grimly, though both Martha and Jack had already gathered that.

" Why did the Master go?" Jack asked.

" The Master was always concerned by number one," the Doctor ground out angrily. He'd personally led a team to try and retake the Cruciform, but he'd been beaten back. " My guess is he got frightened when he saw the whole thing was beyond his ability to stand, so he escaped. Ran to the end of the universe. If only I'd made the connection." He smacked the table in frustration, making Martha and Jack jump. Romana hadn't moved, she felt the same way.

Martha frowned. " If you'd been destroying your own artefacts, why try and preserve this one?"

" Good question," Jack added, looking closely at the Time Lords.

The Doctor and Romana looked at each other, not wanting to really get into the grubby part of Time Lord history. But since the instigator was coming up, Romana decided to get it over with.

" The Master was just an experiment, to see if bringing people back to life was possible," she laid it all down slowly so the humans could get the idea without it being in a rush. " Despite his...desertion, he was a success. The High Council used the success to bring Omega and Rassilon back. We were that desperate."

" Hold on," Jack held up his hands. " You brought back your founders, one lost in the antimatter universe?"

The Doctor nodded. " Only his mind was brought back, and he was given a new body."

Romana sighed. " Rassilon took my place on the council, and I let it go with dignity. Not because he was a hero to the Time Lords, but because I'd grown sick and tired of the ingrates."

The Doctor snorted. Romana ignored him, promising to punish him later.

" Rassilon took power, and Omega joined us at the front." She frowned. " Funny, you hear legends about those two, how they worked together in a team to make Gallifrey the foremost temporal power in the cosmos, and yet the pair could barely stand each other."

The Doctor snorted again, but this time had something meaningful to add. " I was there, when those two stood before the Council, and I wasn't the only person to notice the contempt between those two, despite their smiles. Susan and Rani commented on it, being granddaughter and grandmother. I tried asking Omega about it, but he wouldn't speak about it. I actually grew to like him, despite our past history. Nice bloke. He also made Rani smile." Romana and the Doctor looked disturbed by the thought.

" Past history?"

The Doctor smiled grimly as he answered Martha's question. " Oh, he went mad inside the antimatter universe, alone, and with no one for company. He tried to drain Gallifrey of its energy, and three versions of me stopped him. Later, he tried to come back, but I stopped him again."

Romana got in before the Doctor was forced into answering anymore questions. " Omega got straight to work, he began by discovering distant suns he could use in a weapon he'd dreamt up to destroy the Daleks and end the war."

The Doctor groaned, catching Romana's eyes. " And then Rassilon made that speech, do you remember? That speech where he said the Daleks would never attack Gallifrey whilst he was there?"

Romana groaned this time. " How am I going to forget it?"

Jack got in before the Cruciform question got lost in the mist of the Time War story. " Hey!"

Both Time Lords looked at him irritably. Jack didn't let that phase him, " Can you get to the point of the Cruciform?"

They blinked, they'd forgotten about that. Jack rolled his eyes.

" One of the many contributions to why our people started developing and studying time travel, was because some of us had the power to see into the furture." The Doctor began. " That ability has dimmed over the centuries, so the Time Lords used time technology to look into the future. That's what Rassilon did, and why he created the Cruciform."

" Rassilon saw a race that would eventually become more powerful than the Time Lords. He called them the Divergence, but he never bothered to find out anything about them, except they would have eventually become more powerful than us," Romana continued. " To prevent that from happening, he created a metastructure in the shape of a cross. The Cruciforms arms are 8,000 miles long, dimensionally transcendental, and it sat inside a pocket within the time vortex."

" Yeah, but what did it do?" Martha asked, looking between the two exasperatedly.

The Doctor frowned. " Have neither of you noticed that nearly every race in the universe are humanoid, two arms, hands, legs, and eyes, and even look the same? That's what Rassilon did. He spread biogenic molecules through the Cruciform to every point in the universe, using the time vortex to make it possible. Since then humanoid life have followed the Gallifreyan pattern of evolution."

Jack looked at the Time Lords with horror. " Your people deliberately meddled with the evolution with other species, just to stop one race from becoming better than you?"

Neither Romana or the Doctor had anything to refute what Jack had just asked, they knew it was the truth.

For himself, a man who prided himself on his open mind and his desire to explore, the Doctor had always found that particular chapter of Time Lord history both disturbing and horrendous. It was one thing for the Rani to create a planet sized time manipulator, kidnapping the most intelligent geniuses from various times and places, but at least she'd been honest about her aims.

Unlike Rassilon.

Despite what Rassilon had done to the Divergence, the Doctor couldn't help but feel grateful that the Time Lord's biological pattern of humanoid anatomy had spawned some of the most amazing forms of life in existence, even if the means was a little impure.

Romana had always prided herself on being a perfect Time Lady, but she knew she was sometimes anything but perfect. The Time Lady had known for decades how her people had stopped being perfect, if they ever were and she definitely felt some skepticism on that front. The Cruciform's function had angered her when she'd gained the Presidency because it wasn't something you learnt about in the Academy.

To the Time Lords, the Cruciform was just another super sized thing floating in the time vortex, and no one truly knew what use it had. It had surprised, not to mention disturbed the renegades, Romana and Omega amongst them, because the races they'd visited and interacted with before the Time war had been, in essence, created by the Time Lord founder. Omega, to her surprise, had been repulsed Rassilon would go so far. He'd confided in her and the Rani that the whole point of the vortex project was to experience diversity. What disturbed Romana the most was the lack of response from the other Time Lords who'd remained at home, their attitude hinting that because they were the most advanced race in the cosmos they had the right.

The Doctor nodded grimly. " Yes, but not all of us thought that way."

" Didn't stop you though, did it?"

" Stop it, Jack." Romana ordered. Jack shut up, Romana was in Ice Queen mode, and she did not look happy. " It doesn't matter anymore because the Cruciform has been destroyed, its been gone since the Time war ended. We destroyed it ourselves, didn't we?" She looked over at the Doctor, holding out her hand. Gratefully the Doctor took it. " Yeah," he breathed.

" What happened?" Martha asked.

The Doctor sighed. " The Daleks got wind of the Cruciform, I think from the Matrix records since TARDIS records don't describe how it worked, or even what it did. When they found out it was a biogenic manipulator of immense size and power, they saw it as a means to create new Dalek armies. The Daleks have always been steeped in racial purity, but the war blurred those lines. The Daleks needed new troops, armies, and fleets to continue the war."

" Imagine it, Martha, Jack," Romana looked grim as she added to her human companions. " Imagine being your usual human selves, and then you begin to change. Your thoughts change from being who you are, what your emotions and personality make you, and turn you away from things like love and happiness, to anger, hatred of anyone or anything different. Your mind jumps its IQ, but you join a growing group who feel the same. You willingly pulp and sift your own bodies so that one cell in a billion, the only one fit to be nurtured is placed inside a Dalek casing, ready and born to kill and destroy."

Martha and Jack felt cold, remembering their similar encounters with the Daleks. Martha recalled Dalek Sec, the leader of the Cult of Skaro had tried to recreate his race and give them a life outside the shell. Martha remembered her fear of the Daleks, then Sec began to change. At first the Dalek scientist had seen humans as being a non mutated version of the Daleks, but then he experienced compassion for the first time. That compassion saved Romana from being exterminated, but in the end it didn't help him or the new Human-Daleks from being killed when the other members of the Cult killed them for being different.

Martha had grown up in a world that was constantly fighting a battle of differences; black people may have rights in some countries, but there was always a number who hated people with dark skin. Martha herself had never felt it, but that before she'd ended up in 1913 as Romana's maid. It sickened her, the ignorance and pettiness.

Memories of Rose transmatted off the Gamestation, to end up on Dalek ship a light year away from the solar system, to hearing the Dalek Emperor who Romana had been horrified and furious to learn had survived the war that claimed her race, and what had happened to the various unfortunates who'd been transported to the growing Dalek fleet, only to have everything about them purged and destroyed...they now came back with this new information. Jack had seen dozens of genetic experiments, heard of races who, instead of leaving behind wisdom, had chosen to merely continue their species by lacing their planets with genetic viruses to effectively rewrite their biology into an exact copy of the race who'd died out.

There was nothing wrong, Jack thought, about trying to survive. It was the law of the universe, to survive. Eat, or be eaten. Kill or be killed. The universe was littered with races that fought over land and resources, in that respect humanity was no different.

What Jack hated about the Daleks was they were happy to exterminate lifeforms because they went against their belief the Daleks were superior and all others were automatically inferior. It was ironic they were willing to break their own rules, ignore centuries of genetic manipulation simply to fight a war, but if the situation called for it, as the Emperor Jack had met, and during the Time War, then it was possibly justified.

Didn't mean Jack had to like it.

He liked his body, granted it was a bitch to die and come back, not to mention painful. He liked waking up in the morning, eat and drink, flirt and smile. Especially with Ianto, but that didn't mean he often didn't check out Gwen and Tosh's bums when they weren't aware of it.

Daleks had no such thing as romance, and Jack had no idea how he could live without that part of himself. His flirting, his 51st century philosophy was the core of his being. To be without it was obsene. Part of him hated the Time Lords for interfering with evolution, but he hated the possibility of what the Daleks would've done with such a device.

The idea of him being locked inside a cold metal shell, not feeling sunlight on his face, the cool air on his skin, never feeling raindrops, or the ice cold of ice or snow...

Jack remembered only too well when Romana had sent Rose back in the TARDIS, how Jack had found out. The emperor taunting Romana about the Delta wave, to his own realisation of the range of the whole Gamestation had horrified Jack, but Romana had reminded both the Dalek and him the human race still had colonies. But if Romana had let them live then the Daleks would endanger the whole universe, turning humans into a growing Dalek army. " You see, Jack?" He remembered Romana saying to him, her hair cropped short in her previous life. " The Delta wave is the only way, my only choice...It's the decision I've gotta make for every living being down there. Die as a human, live as a Dalek. Would you choose death as you are, or would you want to live a life in a cold metal cage, stripped of every thought with your mind and body twisted by chemicals and radioactivity?"

Jack's answer was to keep working.

" The Master was sent to the Cruciform to ensure it never happened, though he, like everyone else didn't know what the Cruciform could do," Romana said, getting to her part of the story.

Something rang in Martha's mind. " Hold on," she held up her hand to stop anymore of the story. " If he didn't know what it was, and you didn't either, why go?"

" The High Council of the Time Lords was built on a government formed by Rassilon personally," the Doctor replied, gazing at Martha as though wondering why the humans hadn't worked this all out for themselves. It should have been perfectly obvious. " That means the Council followed a strict list of rules, and scriptures laid down by Rassilon to do certain things, one of which is to protect the Cruciform, at all costs. No reason was given, but the fact its signed by Rassilon himself is influence enough."

" So, what happened?" Jack asked.

" The Cruciform fell," Romana said simply, picking up her tea to take a sip. It was cold, but she ignored it and took a gulp. " The Strike force was gone, we later found they were dead when we got there. And the Master had run away."

The Doctor growled. " He was always running away when things slipped past his precious control," he sneered. " Only this time he made a fatal mistake. Too many people died because of what he'd done there than in the past, and he'll pay for it." A dark glint appeared in his eyes, and it frightened Romana.

Romana didn't like the man she loved vengeful; she took hold of his hand, and squeezed. " Yeah," she agreed, knowing that the Master should pay for his crimes, but not with the penalty the Doctor had in his eyes. " He should pay." She added quietly, a similar dark vengeance in her eyes.

Martha was getting nervous at seeing the two so dark, dangerous and vengeful. She was about to say something, when they snapped out of on their own.

" Luckily for the cosmos, when the Daleks got the Cruciform, they had to work out how the damn thing worked," Romana carried on as if the episode had never happened. " It gave us the time we needed to get things going, and sort it out."

" We'd captured a DARDIS, the Dalek version of a TARDIS," The Doctor said, " and we went out to try and get the Cruciform back, but unfortunately there were problems with Gallifrey."

" What kind of problems?"

" The speech Rassilon gave out had been poorly timed," Romana replied with a sad and angry smile. " Within a week of him saying that, the Daleks attacked Gallifrey. They launched a massive assault, with their most powerful war and time vessels, and shattered the transduction barriers around our homeworld. Gallifrey had already suffered extensive bombing raids that put the Blitz to shame, and we had no clear or defined protection, though a number of weapons we'd managed to make from reverse engineered Dalek technology was used to try and destroy the Dalek fighters."

" The Daleks were driven off," the Doctor said, finally coming into the story. " But they left a lot of damage, and Rassilon was furious. None of the renegades said a word to him, though he clearly heard us say in our minds " its your fault, you stupid bastard," but it made no difference. The dome covering our city had already suffered tremendous damage, but that attack shattered it. Dalek saucers littered the burning valley between the Mountains of Solice and Solitude, compared to the general size of the city's dome, they were like leaves on the ground during autumn. The Daleks had started using pocket universes pushed out of time to build their ships, their new technologies, and we were unable to get in with our viewing equipment which we used to study timeperiods and have a look. So our scientists had to scavenge the wrecks to study the technologies, and to make new weapons and defences."

" And all this was going on as you were getting to the Cruciform?" Martha asked, trying to get the timing right.

" Correct." Romana nodded, but the Doctor's face darkened. " They created their own army and fleet to attack Gallifrey, it was easily the largest yet, and the Time Lords could barely fight them. The attack lasted for days, but when it was finally beaten off and thousands of Daleks littered the landscape, the Time Lords learnt the Daleks had left behind a number of factories, dimensionally transcendental factories containing enough material to build new Dalek armies."

Romana's eyes glazed as the Time Lady remembered how their people had not realised the danger until it was too late. Besides it wasn't really their fault entirely; the previous Dalek assault had caused far more damage than the Time Lords had been able to cope with. Their planet had never known such devastation in aeons, the Time Lords were simply ill-equipped to deal with any of it.

Rassilon hadn't been much help either, but he'd done his best. Romana had to give him credit for trying to deal with some of the damage. She knew he'd invested a great deal of his time and energies working on the Dalek technology captured to find defences and means to fighting the Daleks back more effectively, dealing crippling blows.

The transduction barriers were modified to accept only Time Lord technology and DNA from getting in, but the danger of the factory vessels left behind by the Daleks wasn't known until the ground suddenly ripped across the citadel, and an army of Daleks streamed out chanting ' exterminate.' The Doctor's voice broke through her thoughts. " Those of us fighting offworld heard about the invasion when the transduction barriers were closed off. By then of course the Cruciform mission was underway, and it was too late to change our minds. In any case, I had a plan of sorts.

Flashback.

The Doctor frowned as he and Rani, with Omega's help, worked on the Cruciforms' robotic control systems. The design of the controls were Ancient Time Lord, or Gallifreyan, and to the Doctor's annoyance his knowledge of the ancient systems of his people was rather limited. Rani was closed off, occasionally asking Omega to help her for something, though the Doctor could tell she and the founder were flirting. Despite this being a bad time, the Doctor was happy for the pair of them.

Omega, the Doctor was glad to see, had already become a great help. His knowledge of ancient Time Lord technology was proving invaluable.

There was only one problem.

The burnt out ruins of numerous Dalek casings. The scientists and Warriors assigned here to work on the Cruciform were nothing more than smoking remains.

" Damn it," Susan cursed angrily, jumping in her chair with frustration.

Omega came over to her at once. " What is it?" He asked gently. The ancient Time Lord had quickly become fond of Susan, mostly because she was a more innocent and childlike version of the woman he'd come to love.

Susan glanced up at him, her face tinged with soot. " The Daleks have put some of their technology in to override the Cruciform's systems, but the works patchy. I'm trying to get it out, but the Daleks are paranoid and overly cautious. Their technology is geared the same way. I've counted eighty-nine different traps, and it's slowing me down."

Omega bent down to help her work. She glanced at him. " So," she began awkwardly, her voice low so no one could hear her. " You and my grandmother..."

Omega quirked a brow. He was pleased by his new body, but he was more than happy there was a Time Lady he could relate to. Rani and he had much in common. His relationship with the Doctor was no longer strained, and he'd quickly found he enjoyed the other's company, something that surprised him. He didn't blame the Doctor for his actions, now his mind had been healed by the tele-physicians.

His relationship with Susan was growing as well, and he'd become delighted by the girl's innocence, and her cheeky way of speaking to the Rani, and get away with it, though Rani would scoff or snort, but he could see the smile on her lips.

Susan made Rani happy, so he was happy.

At times Omega wondered if the modern day Time Lady could love someone like him, but she'd surprised him.

This was the first time Susan had directly confronted him on the subject, but since he knew some people liked to talk whilst they worked, or because she was choosing this moment to speak to him, he didn't know. And he wasn't going to pry, Susan was just asking a youthful question.

" Listen," Omega said, keeping his own voice quiet. " I'm not going to-"

" Are you happy with her?" Judging from her shy expression, despite his inexperience due to spending so many thousands of years alone and trapped in an antimatter wasteland, Omega had no trouble believing the girl was trying to avoid running away and hide.

Omega sighed, concentrating on the problem infront of him rather than to his left. Susan hadn't been exaggerating when she'd said Dalek technology was paranoid. He hadn't expected a computer virus like that one, he just hoped the rest of the system hadn't been compromised. He had no idea what the Doctor had in mind, but it needed an intact, or close, Cruciform.

" Yes. I was alone, Susan. I had no one to speak to, but when I came back Rani was assigned to be my mentor in this age of Time Lords. I fell in love with her, and she with me. I could feel it. Sense it. So we-" He stopped when he saw the interest on Susan's face. Then he shrugged. " We Soul bonded."

" WHAT?" Everyone turned when they heard Susan shout, the Doctor looked like he was about to go over himself, but the Rani tugged on his shirt sleeve to get him back to work. The Rani levelled a glare at Omega, who smirked and winked at her. She huffed and turned away.

Omega turned back to Susan irritably. " Keep your voice down," he hissed.

" Sorry," the girl replied sheepishly.

Omega smiled. " I love her, Susan. You don't have anything to worry about. You don't have to call me 'grandfather' if you don't want to."

Susan smiled at him shyly. The pair of them got to work.

The Rani was working with Drax, Romana and the Doctor as they worked on a console.

Drax sighed as he leant back. " Damn Ancient Time Lord tech," he grumbled. He glared over his shoulder where Susan was working on the Dalek interface link, which was pushing nanoweeds into the system, overriding it and rewriting the computer interfaces. Gallifreyan technology was designed to be organic in nature, with physical aspects to avoid viral attacks.

The Daleks knew that.

Drax had to admit the Daleks had done their homework on the technology the Time Lords used, but he was delighted none of their work had messed with the computer he was working on. Susan had the unlucky job of identifying the sections that had been compromised, and there were many. And the number was growing.

The Doctor was also working, his eyes knitted in concentration as he tried to isolate the different parts of the Cruciform from the Dalek's sabotage.

" I know, Drax," he replied when he heard the other Time Lord swear. He didn't blame him either.

Susan called over. " I've managed to isolate the Dalek virus transmitter. I've sent a modified virus to take care of it. It should do its work in another hour."

Omega came over, towering over the others. He didn't dare wrap an arm around his bonded, though the temptation was there.

" What do you plan to do with the Cruciform, Doctor?" He asked. The Doctor, and surprisingly Rani, had come up with a plan, but they hadn't said a word, and not even his bond to Romana would tell him what was going on.

The Doctor smiled at him. " Didn't we tell you?" He asked, the smile growing on his face. The smile faded when Omega growled at him impatiently. If there was one thing Omega had become, it was patient, but there were times, like right now, that that patience disappeared. " Me and Rani have decided to turn the Cruciform into a massive genetic modification device. We discussed it on our way here, and we stole the Dalek's plan. We're going to rework it, just like the Daleks wanted to use it for, but we decided to add a few things on."

Omega quirked a skeptical brow. " Like what?"

" The Cruciform was built by Rassilon to purge the cosmos of the Divergence," Rani said. " He made sure every race followed our basic evolution-"

Omega growled, and looked away. The disgust he felt towards his fellow Time Lord founder made him physically ill. He had wanted to make his people the Lords of time, but only that.

He had no idea Rassilon would take their work and pervert it, just to ensure the Time Lords stayed on top.

Rani kept speaking as though her mate hadn't made a sound. " The Daleks planned to remake the Cruciform and use it to biologically re-engineer other races into becoming Kaleds, and then Daleks." She smirked smugly. " We've taken the idea, and we're going to turn it back on them." The evil smile that lit up her face made Omega want to drag her into another room and have his wicked way with her, but her glare made him remember he couldn't. Not unless he wanted to be castrated.

The Doctor smiled as well. " We have the basic Dalek genetic code, and we're going to also use Dalekanium. That's where the idea of the Attero device comes in."

" You mean you're going to do something to the Dalekanium that will act like an Attero Device?" Susan asked as she came over.

The Doctor nodded. " These new casings are powered by static electricity power feeds, laced with cosmic energy." He held up a data pad. " I had one of our Dalek spies get me the right frequencies of Dalekanium power feeds. The interference we generate from this device will, in theory, overload the feeds."

" Killing the Daleks," Romana smirked.

The Doctor shook his head. " That's not the only thing we're doing here, though," he added. " In the first few years of this war, the Daleks used an Attero device on us, and cost hundreds of lives."

" I heard about that," Omega nodded. " So your basically giving them a taste of their own medicine?"

The Doctor nodded grimly. " More or less, only this time instead of just ships and DARDISes, the Daleks themselves will explode. Every planet, every galaxy, everywhere. I don't know how effective it will be though, what with the Rani's hobby for genetic modification."

They turned to face the Rani, who smiled darkly. " The Daleks wanted to affect evolution, so I'm doing it for them. Only they're going to be the victims. The Cruciform will send out a wave that modifies the Daleks DNA, and make them change within those casings."

Drax leant forwards eagerly. He'd lost his cousins and sister during the war, and he wanted to see thousands of Daleks pay the price. " How will they do that?"

The Rani smiled sympathetically, not liking seeing her old school friend consumed with anger and hate, though she felt the same. " The mutants will grow inside their casings, changing every second into something else."

End Flashback.

" You didn't?" Jack gasped.

The Doctor nodded. " Our work massacred millions of Daleks," the Doctor said. " Unfortunately the war was not over. We may have destroyed the Daleks outside the transduction barriers, but there were still millions inside, and they hadn't been affected by the Cruciforms' modifications. The Cruciform exploded as we left, Omega believed the device had simply struggled to cope with the modifications it had been put through, and the Daleks work was fairly invasive."

" I can believe that," Jack muttered.

" What happened next?" Martha urged them to carry on.

The Doctor sighed as he remembered what happened next. " The Daleks that invaded Gallifrey modified the transduction barriers. For us, only eight months passed outside the fields. Inside, it was another matter."

" Eight months for us meant eight years inside for them," Romana said grimly.

" How did they manage that?"

Jack answered Martha's question. " They simply slowed down time relative to time outside the transduction barriers, right?" He asked the Doctor and Romana.

They nodded.

" We won't go into detail of how we got through - it would take too long - but we will tell you that by the time we did get through we were just in time," the Doctor. " The Time Lords had managed, for eight long years, to hold the Daleks at bay. But they were faltering, and they would have fallen if we hadn't stopped them. We destroyed the Daleks, using a downgraded Dalekanium energy weapon."

Romana breathed out sadly. " Things were never the same after that. After eight years fighting, dying, coming back, and dying again, the Time Lords started to change, and Rassilon didn't help matters. Gallifrey was put under Marshall law, which was the last thing the planet needed, but Rassilon and his yes men didn't care. They started working on reducing the rights of the people, cutting the constitution into shreds, and made plans to create new armies to ensure that Gallifrey was never invaded again. Our people started pointing the fingers to those they thought should be killed, because they didn't like them, and pretended they were Dalek agents. Nothing was done to stop it, despite our best efforts. Even children were not spared from the culling. But Rassilon was working on another plan. We didn't know what."

The Doctor sighed. " Everytime I returned home after the invasion...I just didn't recognise the planet. The atmosphere was choke with industrial fumes as the Dalek alloys, their casings and ships were burnt down to build new weapons. The forests with the silver leaves were cut down to make way for new weapon plants, TARDIS construction was put on maximum, and the there were weapon platforms hanging in the vortex at all times and in space.

On the planet there were rows after rows of weapon platforms that saw numerous reworking...But the change I saw in the Time Lords stunned me, they were becoming less and less moral, and more dangerous. The war and the occupation had changed them, scarred them..." He shook his head.

" Things got worse," Romana said before Martha or Jack asked the Doctor anything else. " The Time War had invited all kinds of horrors into joining. The Could've been King with his Army of Meanwhiles and Neverwheres, paradoxes basically, rose to power, and fought both Time Lord and Daleks. Even the Daleks, with their new time travel technology were hard pressed to fight it."

" The Eternals, almighty beings, were said to have wept at the carnage and left the universe behind," The Doctor added.

" Alternate realities were closed off to prevent the Daleks the chance to get into the multiverse, and potentially come back with a superweapon capable of winning the war, but the walls of reality were only truly sealed off completely when..." Romana glanced at the Doctor.

The Doctor nodded. " When Gallifrey was destroyed, but we've got a long way to go."

Martha and Jack hid their disappointment.


After a brief break, the Doctor and Romana moved to the lounge of the TARDIS. It was like an Edwardian sitting room, with rich wood and luxurious furnishings. There were one or two modern furnishings. Martha looked at the incongruous looking plasma television, and what looked like souvenirs the Doctor had picked up from various planets, movie and theatre posters, film souvenirs and even weird alien objects.

The Doctor sat down and sipped his drink, not in any hurry to get back on track with the story of the Time War, so it was up to Romana to start the story.

" As the Doctor said, our people began to change," she said, " and it wasn't just in the adult population. There may have been a Time war going on, but that didn't mean our children shouldn't receive an education."

Jack's gaze darkened when he caught the implication. " You used your own children as bait?"

Romana shook her head. " Not me, Jack. When the war heated up, I took it upon myself to try and send as many children off into the universe, having their time essences removed from their bodies and stored inside fob watches like the Doctor and the Master did. When the Dalek factories were found too late to stop them, a member of the council took it upon herself to continue the job, but Rassilon stopped her. He claimed they needed all the help they could get, but a three year old with a gun? I don't think so."

Martha smiled. " But surely Romana, if there are children out there, then maybe-"

" Maybe I wouldn't be alone, but the universe is a big place Martha." Romana glowered at her friend in annoyance. " Don't think it hasn't occurred to me, because it has. I've spend my time since the war looking for those same children, but there were no records so I can't exactly track them down. There was a fear the Daleks would find out. Even if I could find them, whose to say their bodies haven't already died of old age, or something? Can I really destroy an individual because they have a Time Lord essence? If I cloned their bodies, then yeah. I still have to find them though, and I've been looking for years."

The Doctor gently took her hand. Seeing she was too distraught to carry on with this painful topic, he took over. Romana had fought long and hard against what Rassilon did with their younger generations, and she'd failed because their people had seen nothing wrong with any of it, even when they began seeing what was being done to the impressionable young minds.

The problem had been was Rassilon was seen as a magical figure, and was the closest thing to a god Gallifrey ever had. Omega, not so much. The other founder had tried to use his historical influence to try and prevent what Rassilon wanted done, but a few words from Rassilon and Omega lost the battle and never tried again. " Rassilon," the Doctor began, " dissolved the chapters of the Academies, the political cores that made up Time Lord society."

" Like the houses of Hogwarts," Romana injected helpfully for her friend's benefits. She grinned at his surprise. " Tell you later."

The Doctor nodded, confused. " Right." Clearing his throat, he continued. " He left the younger initiates into the Academy alone, except for those aged 80 and above."

" 80, how long do you spend in the Academy?" Martha asked.

The Doctor's smile didn't reach his eyes. " You start at 8, finish at 312. Anyway, those young Time Lords were forced to become soldiers, but to do that Rassilon started to show his true colours. He began a series of subliminal programming into the young Time Lord's minds, augmented by drugs and deep level telepathic probings."

" He brainwashed them." Jack's voice was stunned, quiet. Dangerous.

The Doctor and Romana nodded gravely. " He did more than that, Jack," the Doctor said quietly, and just as dangerously as the former Time agent.

" Rassilon brainwashed them to the point where they could not think treasonous thoughts about him, they spouted his propaganda day in day out. He replaced the curriculum with survival training, technology, medicine, weapons training; knives, sticks, barehands, guns of various kinds, exercises, and training scenarios like you would not believe. They didn't stand a chance, the brainwashing made them accept the harsh training. There were many intense levels of training where the recruits, and they were tortured for rewards, to make them stronger. Then Rassilon began his next stages. He forcibly regenerated them."

Jack gaped, he had a basic idea of what regeneration was, but he couldn't believe it was used for this. " He killed them?"

" Twice." The Doctor replied, his anger bubbling beneath the surface of his mind. " The next incarnation was a fanatic, but when the training was finished, you received a super trained warrior. Loyal to Rassilon, and Rassilon only."

Seeing as he was too angry to carry on, Romana took up the story. " Each level of the training brought with it new challenges. Time Lords have remarkable power over their bodies. I could put myself into a self induced coma, slow down my respiration. If I was human, I'd be dead. The recruits," Romana spat out the word with contempt, " were put through dangerous training scenarios, worked to the point of exhaustion. When a Time Lord regenerates, the next body is born of the primary feelings of the last. In the case of my third regeneration, I was distraught, angry at the loss of my people, my friends, my...loved ones," the Doctor looked at her, stunned, " and angry about what my people had become."

" What those recruits felt...I don't like to think." Romana shook her head, not even daring to contemplate imagining what those poor kids had gone through.

There was a long silence, then the Doctor spoke again. " They knew their stuff, when they got to the frontlines. Rassilon considered them too valuable, so he had them placed through a cloning program to make millions of clones out of one Time Lord or Lady, taking a leaf out of the Sontarans book, to make millions of new soldiers who inherited their forebears knowledge. But the clones and their donors had been genetically and bionically engineered, enhanced. They were stronger, smarter, tougher...A single Dalek would need to fire on one of them eight times till the soldier died. But the Daleks could replace their numbers just as easily, and it took months to create a proper new clone.

" During that period, I dunno how long it was but it lasted for countless lifespans, but time was becoming blurred." He sighed. " Time. Otherwise known as the great destroyer, but in the Time war it became a reality." The Doctor glanced at Romana, then back at the humans. " The barriers of time and space were breaking down, those who died in the war came back to life, full of insanity, and-" he sighed raspily in memory, " They lived, only for them to die over and over again."

" Rassilon changed all that," Romana said quietly. " He and his council had prepared the Ultimate sanction, the end of time." She looked down, ashamed.

Martha shrugged. " What was it?" She asked quietly, knowing it couldn't be good.

Romana looked up, almost hesitantly. " The war was going badly, despite our best efforts. It didn't help matters that the Daleks lured our 'soldiers' into traps, and killed them on mass. We'd retaliated with black hole and supernova weapons, mining solar systems and destroying them, without firing a shot at the Daleks. Rassilon didn't care about that, or what Omega did. Don't ask us where he got the idea, we don't know."

" The Ultimate Sanction was dreamt up to create a rupture that would rip the Time vortex apart," the Doctor said simply, his voice cold and Martha was scared to say, detatched, as though he didn't want to think about it but had no choice.

" That's suicide," Jack gasped, imagining it. Destroying a wormhole, of any size, was suicidally dangerous. Detonating one was the equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb in the centre of a planet, and the Oblivion continuum power generators that used captured wormholes to provide power, if they exploded it would bleed whatever was unlucky to get in the way to bleed into another dimension.

" We know, but you haven't heard the punchline." Romana growled. " Rassilon claimed the Time Lords would ascend, to become creatures of consciousness alone. Free of time and cause and effect, ignoring the fact we were destroying the cosmos to save only one race."

" That's obsene," Martha breathed.

" We know, and I had to stop them." The Doctor looked down at this. " Romana and I had been separated for a long time, so I don't know what happened her end, but when I heard the news, I decided enough was enough."

" During my time at the Academy, there was this kid, this girl who was a prodigy, and she once disappeared for a week. No-one could find her, but when she came back, she would not tell a soul where she'd been and what she'd done. She buried herself in something, and when she emerged, she put a telepathic message into my mind, saying one day, go to this place. Then she committed suicide."

" Oh my god," Martha put a hand to her mouth.

The Doctor carried on. " When the time came, the message clicked in my head. I saw everything, at last, what she'd seen. She'd entered the Time war, saw what our people had become, and prepared for it. She'd created a device that combined a time lock with a time loop which ran into a perpetual paradox where the Time Lords would exist for a certain amount of time, created the vortex and gave rise to the memories implanted into various races, but then would be forgotten without having existed, and never escape. It was called the Moment. I managed to save a few things before I connected it to the Eye of Harmony. The temporal energies released during the war made the Moment possible, and soon the Time war was closed off. But Gallifrey was destroyed in the blast when the Eye began converting planets into antimatter. It wasn't deliberate, but it helped the creation of the Moment by providing a colossal amount of energy.

" I managed to reach the TARDIS, and I escaped. The blast wave hurled me into the vortex, somehow, one way or another I was able to guide the TARDIS away from Gallifrey, but I began to regenerate. I didn't have time to adjust to my new body when it finished. I was out of it, my TARDIS was a wreck and I was in a new body with new other Time Lord, or so I thought," he cast a meaningful look at Romana. " I didn't even realise the Chameleon arch was on my head, not until it was too late. When I felt myself being pushed into the watch, I couldn't fight it. I spent years in the watch. My mind lived inside a virtual environment to stop me from getting bored, but I wanted my body back. I'm still adjusting to it now." The Doctor raised his hands up to look at them.

" I don't recognise these hands," he whispered after a moment. " I still think my body's in its Eighth incarnation, but its not."

" How did you stand being in the watch?" Romana asked; if her experience from being hunted by the Family was the same as the Doctor's, then she'd feel pure sympathy.

The Doctor closed his eyes, and his fists. " I wanted to get out," he whispered. " I hated it, Romana. Being locked out of my body, and I'd only just regenerated. I spent most of my days screaming, pleading for someone like Chantho or Magister, and that was before I learnt he was the Master, to hear me, to let me out."

Romana nodded. That was exactly how she'd felt. Those fob watches were not designed for comfort. There may not have been dimensions within the watch, but it felt like a prison to Romana when she'd hidden from the Family. She'd been more than delighted to escape like wisps of smoke when Tim Latimer opened it.

" How did you survive?" The Doctor asked her curiously.

Romana sighed. " The Eye of Harmony created earthquakes, and the Daleks were closing in for a final push. Our people had forgotten their savagery, and they were panic stricken. In the confusion, I reached a TARDIS bay where I selected my TARDIS, an unprimed Mark 5, and prepared to make my escape. A Dalek transported close by, and shot me. It was a fleeting blow, but it was painful. I could feel the regeneration begin I set the controls for a random destination, priming the TARDIS, and I escaped. I regenerated just as Gallifrey exploded." She shuddered.


An hour later, the Doctor was walking slowly towards the room Romana had taken for her own. She hadn't been very happy to learn her previous room, the one she'd taken during her time with him in his Fourth incarnation, had been deleted, but she'd adapted.

He had to tell her, it wasn't fair to keep what he had secret from her...

He reached the door and knocked on it.

The door opened. Romana stood inside, wearing a sheer dark blue satin nightdress. The Doctor swallowed as he gazed at her as a part of his body responded.

Romana smirked when she saw the reaction, her eyes dropping downwards before looking up at him with barely contained lust, and acting on instinct she pulled him in, wrapping her arms around his neck and started to kiss him. She moved her pelvis closer to his own, and she began rubbing. The Doctor pushed her away regretfully, though he truly wanted to just give in but he couldn't. Not just yet. Romana looked hurt.

" What's wrong?" She asked. " I thought we were going to-"

" Later," the Doctor whispered, reaching out to rest his hands on her hips and pull her towards him. He kissed her forehead. " I need to show you something."

Romana frowned, but she followed the Doctor out of her room. They walked towards the cloister room, and when they got to the doors, the Doctor simply touched them to open them.

Standing in the doorway, he pointed.

Romana followed his pointed arm with a frown, and gasped.

Author's note. Cliffhanger. But the clue is close by.

Anyway, I know I didn't mention the fall of Arcadia, but I wanted to get to what mattered the most, not individual battles.