a/n: Well this is it for this fic. This is the last chapter of this story but there will be more to come in the sequel. This has been such a wonderful learning experience and I have really enjoyed writing this story. I really am looking forward to writing the sequel. Thank you all for reviewing!

Disclaimer: Do not own or profit from Doctor Who or any of the whoverse.

Don't Mess With the Eternals

Rose lay asleep on the old worn leather couch in the study at Dutton Manor, the Doctor having carried her in from the car after they arrived last night. He was feeling grateful at least some of the furniture came with the house when they bought it, otherwise they would have had to curl up on the floor. He sat in a weathered brown leather chair by the fireplace just watching her having napped for a short time after tucking her in for the night. The orb sat in a crystal bowl on a table next to him. Rose had yet to tell him what happened while he was unconscious but he had suspicions of otherworldly interference and the feelings he was sensing from the old girl below were only confirming his worry. Something was terribly wrong and Rose was in the middle of it. He was tempted to wake her up and demand she tell him but he knew, although she was one of the strongest people he had ever met, she was exhausted and had reached a bit of a breaking point.

While Rose slept, the Doctor went exploring in the kitchen to see if he could find the makings for tea. Luckily, he found a tea kettle and some cups and found some tea bags and sugar packets in his pocket. He anxiously brewed tea while he waited for Rose to awaken. He wished he could abolish this feeling of unease. Just sitting there waiting for Rose with that feeling that something was coming, was driving him a bit mad. Finally he jumped up and decided to explore the house and examine it for anything left behind by the prior owners as well as working at securing the house from unwanted guests.

Hours later, "Doctor!" Rose called out.

The Doctor raced into the study. Rose was sitting up, her hair in disarray looking a little disoriented.

"Good morning, would you like some tea," the Doctor asked softly.

Rose blinked sleepily and nodded her head. The memories of the events from the day before weighed heavily on her mind. The doctor handed her a cup of tea. She took a sip and looked up at him. He waited patiently for her to say something. Finally she spoke.

"Doctor, we have to talk about yesterday."

"Oh Rose I am so so sorry. I should have known what was coming," the Doctor said dejectedly. "There was no way that orb could be there by accident. It had to have been placed there by someone with advanced knowledge and technology. The moment, it was triggered by Malcolm, it would have become a beacon to anyone on the lookout for temporal anomalies. It's just, I had hoped I'd have time to stabilize and move it. I should never have allowed Torchwood to distract me, I should have…." Rose stopped him before he could finish.

"No Doctor, none of this was your fault. You need to let me tell you about who attacked you yesterday."

"I know what it was. I may not be full Time Lord but I'm still sensitive to the flow of time. Someone used my sensitivity against me, it was a sort of a burst of time directed at me specifically. There aren't many creatures in the universe capable of that and those that are, well, they should have been destroyed in the Time War."

"Doctor he looked human but I could tell he wasn't. It was like he looked right through me and he was carrying this," Rose reached into her pocket and pulled out the metal disc and handed it to the Doctor. The Doctor gasped as he held it in his hand.

"Do you know what this is?" he asked Rose.

"No, only that he was holding it in his hand and seemed pretty intently focused on you. When I questioned him, he got all threatening and that's when you screamed out. He did something while holding it didn't he?"

"Oh I doubt he needed this for that. This was only a bit of a calling card. Haven't seen one of these in a very very long time. What else did he say to you?"

"He kept demandin the orb and saying he was teachin you a lesson for interfering where you shouldn't. He said he knew me and he knew about the dimension rip. Doctor, he called me a creature of time and he knew all about you. He kept going on about ancient old ones and eternals and how people would come lookin for the orb. He said that someone stole it from him and he wanted it back."

The Doctor felt a cold chill run through him. This shouldn't be possible. The ripple from the Time War should have destroyed the eternals, but then again, they're eternal so he guessed that meant they could survive anything, even a critical mass overload in time.

"Anything else, what did you do when the eternal attacked me?"

Rose looked down a bit before continuing. "Uh, I sort of hit him and tackled him to the ground."

"You What! I'm sorry it sounded like you said you attacked him?"

"Um Yeah," said Rose a bit sheepishly taking another sip of tea.

The Doctor sat back and just stared at her. "Do you have any idea what he could have done to you, to the whole planet! Rose, never ever attack an eternal, they have enormous power at their disposal, so much so they could practically unmake the entire planet." The Doctor sat back just stunned at what Rose had done, but a small part of him was actually a little proud. His Rose would go down fighting.

"Okaaay, so we have one ticked off eternal after us, a powerful orb that everyone wants and somehow ended up in a fountain outside of London and oh yes, it has a tendency to leak time."

"Doctor, he also said that the ancient first ones had been watchin me crossin the void, that some battle between chaos and order is going on and that we're sort of in the middle of it and needed to choose a side. I may have, sort of, chosen by accident."

"What do you mean by accident!"

"Well, by not givin im the orb, he said I had chosen. He told me it was a pity cause he would've given me a favor if I'd helped him. He said all eyes were on us now and next time we met, it wouldn't be friendly."

The doctor squeezed his eyes shut, ran his hands through his hair practically pulling his hair out. When he finally opened his eyes, he set his hands on the arms of the chair and looked at Rose.

"Rose Tyler, you certainly know how to annoy the wrong people don't you. That being said, you did the right thing. This creature could have done incredible harm with the orb. There's no telling what his plans are," the Doctor gently patted the orb.

Rose nearly came undone when she saw the Doctor touch it. "What are you doing! I thought that thing was dangerous when you touched it!" Rose yelled.

"Not for me. Time Lord me, well part Time Lord. Still, I know what I'm doing. Malcolm was under the influence of psychic energy leaking through time when he touched the orb, and well, he didn't have the right temporal senses to control it. I on the other hand, am quite temporally endowed."

The Doctor sniffed and adjusted his tie and looked a bit smug after this pronouncement. Rose just giggled a bit "You certainly are!" smiling at him with that coquettish little smile with just a bit of pink tongue peaking between her teeth.

Now that she and the Doctor were working out what to do, Rose started feeling better. There was one more thing she needed to talk to the Doctor about. "Doctor, there is one more thing."

"There's more?" The Doctor asked a bit worried, his brow furrowing.

"Well, ya see I had this dream the other night and well, I think it was sort of about what's happening."

"What do you mean sort of? What did you dream?"

"Well I was in Dutton Manor and it was all quite lovely but then I was in a garden maze with this rude little Fluffy Fezzby fellow and .." before she could finish the Doctor jumped up and started pacing.

"You met the Prime Fluffy Fezzby and didn't tell me!" he exclaimed. "Well what did he say? He doesn't just appear unless its important. You didn't taunt him did you?"

"Doctor, will you let me finish! No I didn't exactly taunt him but he was a bit rude at first. Anyway, he talked to me about choices and choosing and made me think about choices I made in the past, specifically choices that related to you. Everything was fine and I chose a path and was getting down the path when all of sudden you woke me up, so I never found out anything else, thanks for that by the way." Rose looked at him a bit miffed.

"What, how is this my fault and what do you mean choices relating to me?"

"It's nothing, just a lesson that's all and its how I knew what to tell the scary eternal yesterday."

"I see," said the Doctor even though he really didn't.

"Doctor are you doing okay? You look a bit peaked. You did get attacked yesterday. Maybe you should rest a bit?" Rose was a bit worried. He had deep shadows under his eyes and she could see the worry in his face. His suit was rumpled and even his hair looked dull and tired.

"Rose, it was just a bit of an overload, I'm fine. We really need to think about this whole orb thing. While you were napping, I did a quick once over of the Manor. So far it looks free of any monitoring devices, but I still want to install some jamming equipment as well as a perception filter. The old girl below, the TCB, will be key in getting a perception filter working and large enough to cover the entire Manor. It's definitely a priority."

"Well, if your sure. You need to promise me you'll get some rest tonight then. It's no good if you collapse from exhaustion. So what is a perception filter again?"

The Doctor deftly ignored her worry about his physical state and instead went into lecture mode.

"A perception filter is a telepathic field which will be generated by the TCB, which misdirects the senses so that when someone looks at the Manor, they won't find anything unusual or noteworthy about it. For example, there was a perception filter around the orb, powered by the orb which is why no one could see it on the fountain. Well, anyone except me, but that would be Time Lord senses."

"So, it'll work on humans but not eternals?" Rose asked.

"Oh Rose, nothing we have here is going to keep an eternal out. The best we can hope for is to hide the orb in as many layers of perception filters, wavelength diverters, jamming equipment and anything else I can find or throw together. None of that is a perfect fix but it may give us time to think of what to do."

Rose was quiet and stared at the floor. The Doctor went over and kneeled in front of her.

"Hey, its going to be all right. We've been through worse," the Doctor spoke to her softly.

"It's just we don't ever seem to get a break. Here we are in this lovely home with the TCB and all this chance for a brilliant future but now, we just have this eternal thing hangin over us like the grim reaper."

"You are Rose Tyler and I am the Doctor, the stuff of legends, if it was easy, we'd be bored," the Doctor teased her.

Rose smiled and bumped her head against his.

"Right, well first things first, breakfast!" the Doctor exclaimed jumping up with great enthusiasm. "Unfortunately, we have no provisions in this house but luckily I am always prepared." The Doctor reached into one of his coat pockets and pulled out two bananas and a two packets of biscuits. "Molto Bene! Breakfast."

Rose laughed and thanked the Doctor, both of them devouring the bananas and biscuits. Neither of them had eaten since breakfast the prior day, well week actually, since they were stuck in a time anomaly in the fountain, so they were both hungry.

"Welll that will have to do for now. Let's get to work on the Manor and do something with this pesky orb."

Rose and the Doctor spent hours setting up jamming devices, deadlock sealing windows and doors, and starting on the perception filter. The Doctor had revived the MST so that they could transport back and forth between the TCB beneath the house and the main floor of the house. They worked together seamlessly just as they had aboard the Tardis, each anticipating the needs of the other, almost as if telepathically linked. By mid afternoon, they were both famished and tired. Rose had just received a reminder text from Jackie about tea that night so they tried to wind down their work so they could get ready to head over to the Tyler mansion.

Rose lingered in a nice hot shower but as she lingered she started to fret about everything. After she showered and changed clothes, which the Doctor had brought up from the car, she went downstairs and found the Doctor standing in the solarium staring out at the garden.

"Hey," Rose said softly as she came up and curled under his arm. He wrapped his arm tightly around her.

"You've been worrying," he said to her.

"Perhaps a bit," she acknowledged.

"All we can do is the best we can. We can't live our lives in constant fear and worry. Remember when we first found the old girl and I told you she was a bit worried?"

"Yeah but we took care of Abby."

"It wasn't about Abby. She could sense the orb and what the orb's presence meant. This thing we're in the middle of, this struggle of chaos versus order, it's been going on since the beginning of time and will continue until the end of all things whether or not we interfere or take sides. The truth is, we can't not be involved, it's a given that we are and will be. There was a time oh so long ago, when I was put in the position of choosing one over another. I was contacted by one of the Guardians of our old universe. He was the White Guardian who represented order and he put me in charge of assembling the key to time, a powerful device meant to restore balance in that Universe. His opposite, the Black Guardian who represented chaos tried to stop me and steal the Key to Time. It didn't end well and eventually I was forced to destroy it utterly. Eternals are like no other beings in the universe and none of them are to be trusted completely."

"So White and Black, is that like good versus evil?" Rose asked.

"Rose, you will find that what is good or evil is subjective and a matter of opinion. What's good to me, may not be to someone else. This really isn't about good or evil but chaos versus order, just like the eternal told you. It's important that we don't confuse those concepts. You see, there are some who think that the universe evolves through chaos and stagnates with order. Others feel that the universe can only evolve through order. Truth is, I believe that there needs to be both. I may not like always like the form that chaos chooses, like war or violence but sometimes from destruction, something beautiful is born."

"How will we know what to do, what's right?"

"Can't say, we're going to have to feel this one out, see what happens. You know make it up as we go, same as usual," the Doctor smiled at her.

Rose smiled back at him. "So we're doin this together right?"

"Together, always," he said smiling at her.

To be continued in The Eternal Adventure

a/n: Thank you all so much for reading! I really really appreciate your reviews. Do stay tuned for the sequel.