AN: This chapter is a little serious (but still wacky, as per Whovian specs, and it's good angst where it is) but the chapter after this one will be more funny. I thought the end I have in mind (don't worry, we aren't there yet) would be more adorable with the Doctor getting all ready for the Angstyville Cemetery. So yeah. And also, review! Is any of this remotely believable? No! (not impossible, though. Just a bit unlikely) But it would be cool if it did happen. That's basically the theme of this particular story. 'Well, it would be cool if it did happen.' Enjoy the fast update and long chapter!

Martha Jones had the expression of someone getting hit by a falling anvil they'd see coming from a mile off, but had thought was a very turbulent passing cloud. She knew me even better, and she had a good guess at what my brilliant plan really was. Wasn't it what I always tried to do, only to be thwarted by noble sacrifices and good luck and genius? Save as many people, that was always the goal. I didn't include myself in that. Not until recently, that is.

"Someone's got to control the thing, or it'll tear the world apart. And it's got to be me. Anyone else, and they run the risk of..."

"What about me?" Jack stepped over the circle. "What's the worst that could happen to me? What have I got to risk?"

"A message," I said quietly. "A warning from long ago and far in the future. I don't know what would happen if that was lost. And I know you can't die, but this wouldn't be like dying. It could erase you from ever existing. I don't know how I know that's true, but I do." It was like a half-forgotten memory.

"I think on a cosmic scale you being erased from time would be a lot more important than me, though. I know you don't want to hear it, but it's true."

The thing is, I had a pretty good response to that one. "Yeah," I said, holding up a hand. "But if I was erased none of this would have ever happened. Because without me arriving, nice old Professor Yana would have continued on in his quest for a utopia and never looked twice at his watch. And also, just to mention, he'd probably be dead, because the Time War would never have ended, and that means the TARDIS would have been destroyed when the old museum I got it from was bombed, and so no paradox machine, but there's still a giant paradox, and so the easiest way for the universe to fix it would be to not let me be erased. So I wouldn't be."

"You think you wouldn't be," the Master piped up. "I believe that was what you meant to say."

"Oh, shut up, you."

"If you want me to that much, Doctor, then I think for you I... won't."

"Well, have fun with your future," I muttered, irritated. "And I won't even care."

"Have fun with yours," he returned. "You're the one with the suicidal plan. Go ahead and kill me or whatever in the future-past. I don't care either."

"You didn't," I said vengefully. "And I did. So, ha! See how you like that." I wasn't sure how that was supposed to have been a good response, but I wasn't at top form when it came to repartee.

He stuck his tongue out at me. "Nyah! I will like it. So there!" That infantile, immature, irredeemably insolent...

"Well, I won't then, but... but I will now. I don't care anymore. And you can't even gloat. I'm going to die anyway, so it might as well be here."

Once I said it, I knew I should have phrased that differently. There are certain things that always have to come out a certain way, and that was one of them. I'm going to die anyway, so it might as well be here. Try saying it, out loud. And you can't just say it, you have to mean it, you have to believe that it's true, really think it's going to happen... and try saying that without it making your voice crack, just a little.

Like it did mine.

"Doctor..." whispered Martha fearfully. "Don't say that..."

"It's true. Hadn't meant to tell you, but I suppose you won't remember." I turned around and reached in my shirt pocket for the sonic screwdriver, wondering if I should just install it into my hand or something, for convenience. When you think about it that could be quite useful, but it isn't really my style. I wouldn't feel right with some kind of bionic hand.

As if that thought had been the cue, I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned around without thinking, starting to say something, anything... and stopped. Because the owner of the hand hadn't been who I expected.

"Just... say that again," said the Master, almost... gently? What was he playing at? "What in Gallifrey's name do you mean?"

I stumbled back, just out of shock more than anything else, and before I could think of something cleverer to say I just said something true. "They... someone told me. Just something someone told me, not long ago."

He still had this faraway look in his eyes. "And you believed them?"

"It wasn't just them. It was the Ood, too, and everything else..." In my jaw I felt the twitching beginnings of unreasonable anger, and I didn't understand why it made me feel like that, every time I thought about it, dying. Why did it curdle in my chest like every time I saw a hand raised against a human child, or a gun pointed at a scared young man just looking for his girl, have you seen her anywhere? - even though I know he's too late to save her. Why did it make me feel like that, to think of dying...?

"What did they tell you?" He moved closer, and I backed away more, just trying to chew over the knot in my throat. It was like I felt about bad things being done to people who don't deserve it...

"I... why do you care?"

"Something that gets you this scared should worry anyone." It was evasive, not a real response at all, I knew. Factually correct but not true.

"No," I whispered. "Just me this time. And this could be it, anyway. Everything fits, doesn't it? 'He will knock four times...' that's what she said..."

The Master whispered the words under his breath, repeating them, trying to make them mean something else. He was smiling now, in a lopsided, pained way, like he couldn't help but find irony in all this.

"It doesn't matter anymore," I said angrily. "I have to do what I have to do, and all of you have to get down to the surface and whether I come down or not doesn't change anything, because all of you will be seeing me again. Not like this, not with all these memories. But I'll be here, the whole time. Old. Might be a bit old. Little wrinkly around the eyes. Spotty. Oh, I can't forget spotty. Love the spots..." My voice (damn the thing) was shaking. I thought how sure of myself I'd been then, even in the worst hours of that awful year. And now, here I was, with everything going so well, and my voice was actually shaking. "Well, don't just stand there," I finally managed to get out. "Get in the circle and let me do my job, all right?"

"But what are you saving us for?" Martha's mother, who hadn't spoken the whole time. She had an air of nausea floating around her, like she was truly ill, but I could see right away it was coming from fear. "I still don't know who you are, or why you're any better than him-"

"Mum!"

"Martha, how can you possibly know what he's up to? You don't know him!"

"Yes, I do! Better than you do, anyway! If you hadn't been so willing to think he was up to no good, we wouldn't be-"

She swallowed the last of the sentence before it could come out.

"But I've been listening to what you've been saying," said Martha's mother resolutely. "And from what I can tell, once you get that mad contraption working, you'll be able to undo everything that happened here. Am I right?"

It was horrible to tell the truth, as usual, but I couldn't find the heart to lie. "No," I told her sadly. "Not everything. Just from the point where I appeared. When I started acting funny."

"You're always acting funny, though."

"Jack, that's not helping here."

"Well, all right. Do you mean when you started acting especially weird?"

"About there, yes."

"Or should we say when he started acting especially weird?" Jack pointed at the Master. "Weird for him."

Loath to go without some kind of physical demonstration eliminating all obfuscating ambiguities, the Master came over and dragged me into the center of the room. Then he jabbed the end of the laser screwdriver into the tip of my nose. "We were right about at this point," he said, looking around. "This was happening, and everything from then on won't have."

Yeah. Very eloquent. "Watch that," I said mildly, looking at the laser. "You could hurt someone, you know."

"Sorry." He put it away, and substituted his index finger.

"Don't know if that helps, but I appreciate the effort." Sarcasm again.

"But yeah, right about there," the Master went on. "No dolphins."

I rolled my eyes. "A world without dolphins..."

"No zapping Toclafane."

"I didn't mean to," I protested. "It was a split-second reaction."

The Master looked at me curiously. "Since when do your split-second reactions involve killing things? I thought that was me."

I shut up. Since they told me my song was ending... Do you want to know why I'd been on that planet, chatting about dolphins? Avoiding what I knew had to come next, all the anger built up inside me, all the shame from Mars, all the fear, all the pent-up... humanity? What do you think?

"You really think you're going to die," said the Master wonderingly. Then his face crumpled. "I can't believe you. You're a joke." He turned around and stalked into the circle. "Well, if you're going to go looking for it, I won't stop you." Why did he look so angry? What did I do? He was insane, of course, but sometimes what went on in his head was stranger than the usual.

He looked the way I felt, actually. Like all of this shouldn't be happening. Like it just wasn't right.

"Because if we go back to the way it was before, you will get shot," said Martha fiercely. "And I don't know what to do then! We'll all be stuck in some horrible future-"

Yes, I thought. And I'm dying so it can happen.

"And Mum and Tish, they're here! What was he planning to do? Hold them hostage? What was going to happen to us?"

And here we are, with no fighting, no killing, no pain, and it all has to be destroyed for the sake of the future... NO! I won't make the same mistake twice...

"What was going to happen?"

And I'm going to die.

I don't want to...

"It's not fair!"

It came out before I could hold it back. I'd realized why I was feeling like this. It was unfair, so incredibly, horrifically unfair, and I had to just go along with it.

But now everyone was looking at me in sympathy. And I couldn't have that.

"Life isn't fair," I said, breathing hard and trying to hold in the worst of it. "It just isn't. But I can't change everything. I can't save everyone. Sometimes there's a time and place for everyone to die. Something set in stone... not stone, because all you need it time for a stone... time, or a sandblaster..." I wished desperately to sandblast my future away and carve something better, something more lasting and more fitting...

"ARGH!" I wailed. "METAPHORS AGAIN!" I beat my head with my fists. "Why, why, why with the metaphors? Why?" Then I took a deep, deep breath, like a dragon getting ready to roast everyone in sight.

I let it out. "Into the circle," I said. "Everyone. Now. No questions. I'm starting the pulse."

It was simple enough to get to my post and set up the last few couplings. "So I'm not sure how well this is going to work," I pointed out. "But I think it'll be horrible enough to cancel out the rifts. Everyone within a two or three million mile radius should hear it... unless you're in the bubble, which is right around here. But I think I've give you lot psychic asylum, though," I amended. "Means you can't hear it. The sound isn't dangerous, but it won't be very pleasant."

"I'll take my chances," said Jack. "I don't think we ought to get any special privilege, just because we know you." He turned around until he saw more nodding.

I realized that for them, this wouldn't be like a reset. For them, this world was real. For me, it was already gone. "Right," I agreed, looking down. "No special anything. Just... cover your ears, if it makes you feel better."

"Will it actually do anything?" asked Jack skeptically.

"I dunno. It could."

"You lying?"

Of course I was. "Well... maybe." And then I turned and pointed the sonic right at the heart of the mass of electronics, and I wondered what to say at such a pivotal moment. Usually I could come up with something clever.

Guess it wasn't my day.

"This should work," I said, and put my thumb on the button.

It looked like nothing happened, but I didn't expect it to do much at first. The only really distinctive difference (and the sign that it was working) was that the light of the screwdriver was on, but there wasn't any sound coming from it.

Or, not unless you stood at exactly the right angle. And even then you wouldn't hear anything, because your eardrum would have ruptured, and possibly your skull as well. Because I had it on a very, very strong setting.

And then the next indication came, and that was the glow that began to form around the assembled microphones and computer bits and who knew what else had been added to the mix.

Martha was anxiously huddled in the transport circle between her sister and mother, holding on to them as if they were balloons and would float away if she let go. "Are you ready to send us down?" she asked.

"Once the signal pattern's stabilized, I can start targeting the rifts," I told her, as the screwdriver hummed with power. It was getting difficult to hang on to. The whole room had begun to quiver, like there was an earthquake, only we weren't on the Earth's surface... so would that be a skyquake?

Just as a side note, there really ought to be something called a skyquake. It reeks of awesome.

"Just one moment... There! Now, are you all ready?"

Martha Jones lifted her head and looked straight at me. "Don't you dare die," she ordered.

What could I say? Would don't worry work? Or maybe trust me? Should I reassure her, or put on a brave face? Would it matter what I did here? No one would remember. Sometimes you just want to tell people everything, and let them take care of things for you.

"I don't want to," I said in a small voice, realizing that these people might be the last I'd ever see. "But no one else gets a choice. Why should I?"

And right then, and only then, did they understand that I really was from the future, not the Doctor they knew. And I saw in Jack and Martha's eyes how hard that hit. What they was me, standing up here with no one by my side. Like so long ago... the most terrible decision I had ever had to make... and for the first time I wondered that if I hadn't been alone, if there had been someone there, like there always was, I might have found a way to save them.

And now, to save myself.

"I'm sending you down," I told them, and turned the sonic screwdriver to the vortex manipulator. "Hands on ears?" They all dutifully complied. "Count of three..." I shook my head. "No, count of five..."

Clinging to the last shred of interpersonal contact I might ever have...

"Five. Four... Three..."

What some annoying people do is, when they reach one, they do whatever it is they're counting down to do, but that's not how you're supposed to do it. It's on zero when the countdown's over, not one. Get your math right! I mean, come on...

"Two..."

I would do it right. I wouldn't hesitate. I wouldn't break down.

"One."

My finger was on the button, but then something froze in my chest and...

I hesitated.

AN: Did you forget to reviewwwww? ;)