A/N: This is the quickest update I'll ever manage. I got excited. Only taken about six stories, but we finally got there :o

The Doctor took a bullet for Alex near the end of Time. Jack killed someone, and Brax disappeared in Co-consciousness. Rose miscarried in Mother's Nature, and what REALLY happened to make her miscarry is at the end of Time. Leah discovered all of her toys could talk and they took her to a strange world in Mother's Nature.

Chapter 10: Fateless

The next few hours involved the Doctor being poked and prodded by various medical personnel, and having several needles stuck into him. The Doctor obviously wasn't enjoying it, but clearly there wasn't much he could do about it as any twinge of his muscles seemed to cause him a significant amount of pain. Rose had finally convinced him to accept a painkiller and the only one he'd deemed safe seemed to numb everything, including his brain. So he could only lie there in an analgesic-haze on various beds, being carted around for various scans, being tested for various problems. It had taken them a while to establish there was no internal damage, and finally they'd started cleaning him up.

Rose had been with him for most of it, only leaving to go and check on Alex and Leah intermittently. When she returned at 8 o'clock, a nurse was stitching up the last of the cuts on his face and he was lying there unmoving, his eyes sunken.

'Doctor?' Rose tried.

He look at her, his eyes a little glassy. 'Rose,' he muttered.

'How's your drug trip goin'?' she joked.

'Can't move. Feel great,' he slurred, offering a wonky grin.

She smiled. 'Alex is asleep. Leah's fine. She wants to see you, but I thought we'd better wait until your face looks all right.'

The swelling had gone down very quickly, leaving only cuts and bruises, and one of his eyes bloodshot. His exposed torso was littered with dark, angry bruises and further lacerations, with his skin torn open by Samuel's boot. Now the blood had been cleaned up it looked much less worse, and she was much more calm.

The Brigadier had visited to tell them the leak had been one of the cleaners on their wing, who'd been overhearing their conversations and spreading around a small group of people. He'd further asked if the Doctor would like to press charges, which would result in the entire group being kicked out of Snowdon, but of course both he and Rose already knew the Doctor's answer. The group were instead detained in the Brig indefinitely, and extra security had been assigned to the gallifreyan-human hybrid family. The Doctor was too drugged to protest, and Rose wasn't going to disagree.

At 9 o'clock he fell asleep. Rose kissed him, and left.

'Wakey, wakey Doctor,' a voice said, rousing the Doctor to consciousness.

The Doctor opened his eyes. He was in the hospital room, shirtless, hooked up to some IVs with the periodic beep of the monitor measuring his hearts rate beside him. It was dark and his vision was incredibly blurred, but he could see a shadowy figure standing next to him. It took him five seconds to realise in a haze of drugs that he could feel it was the Master.

Slightly panicked at his vulnerable state, he tried to move. He couldn't. The drugs he'd been given were seeing to that. He was unable to move, he realised, and completely at the mercy of the Master.

He took in a sharp gasp of breath. 'Master. Get away from me,' he hissed.

The Master laughed. 'Oh, anything you say, Doctor. Post-haste, three bags full,' he replied sardonically.

'How did you get in here?' the Doctor asked weakly. 'This place is in lockdown ...'

'Magic,' the Master drawled, and waved a hand over the Doctor's eyes. The Doctor flinched. 'How's the vision? Bit blurry? Good.'

'What do you want?' the Doctor grunted, blinking desperately to try and focus his eyes. He couldn't see the Master's face, and that was seriously unnerving him.

'I can't believe you'd let the humans do this to you,' the Master said, picking up the Doctor's limp arm, waving it around gleefully before dropping it again. 'Look at you. A Time Lord reduced to this because of some humans with racial issues.'

'Don't touch me.'

'What, like this?' The Master poked his stomach. 'And this?' He flicked the Doctor's forehead. 'Or this?' He placed his hands around the Doctor's neck, and squeezed.

The Doctor's air cut off immediately. He began to choke, completely unable to defend himself ...

The Master let go, laughing. 'Just joking,' he said. 'I wouldn't do that. Honest.'

'Wh-what do y-you want?' the Doctor asked, barely able to form the words.

'Oh, I do love you when drugs make you even more dopey than usual,' the Master teased.

'What do y-you want?' the Doctor stressed.

The Master sighed, and sat on the bed beside him. 'You've got some issues that I need to tell you about. And I don't just mean your normal issues, I mean your deep, deep ones.'

'What?' the Doctor croaked.

'The fact that the world is falling apart around you.'

'What are you talking about?'

'My God,' the Master laughed. 'You seriously haven't noticed? Not even a little bit? Time and space. It's completely caving in around you.'

The Doctor frowned. 'It's not.'

'Uh, yeah it is,' the Master replied. 'You remember when you got shot in Torchwood Tower? Did anything about that seem a bit weird to you?'

'What?'

'You dived in front of a bullet. You launched yourself across a room and dived in front of it. Maybe that would've worked if you moved long before the bullet fired, but I think that would've distracted the past version of Jack, wouldn't it? So how on Gallifrey did you manage to anticipate that bullet and dive over that quickly to save your son, despite being pretty much paralysed? You and I both know the physics of moving bullets. That's not even remotely possible. Was it like the films? Did the world go into slow-motion? Because it wasn't adrenaline. It actually did.'

The Doctor stared up at him, wordless.

'The elongation of a second,' he supplied. 'Here and there, little seconds are extending. Time is warping around you. The rules of space are breaking apart. Little Leah's seen it too. Talking toys and strange worlds. I don't think you took her seriously at the time, did you? That was the result of a fissure.'

'I dunno what you're talking about …'

'People have been dying and people have coming back to life around you. People are forgetting things too. Do you remember Jack killed someone while you were in New Shada? Have you thought about that at all since? What about Brax? He completely disappeared and nobody has talked about it since. And a Jack from the past tried to shoot your son, remember that? Now, if I was as overemotive as Jack, I think I'd be feeling a little bit guilty about it. Weird he hasn't mentioned it since, isn't it?'

'I …'

'You forgot that too, huh? Never even bothered to look into that?'

'What?'

The Master sighed. 'Why did that past version of Jack want to kill your son?'

'I don't know.'

'Think about it, at least. What did he shoot you with?'

'I don't know …'

'Memories are slipping aren't they,' the Master pointed out. 'You were propelled backwards by the force of the bullet. Normal guns aren't capable of that, so that narrows the field to a bullet with an impact zone large enough to throw you spectacularly across the room, but not powerful enough to rip you in two in the process. Have a think.'

There was a long pause as the Doctor tried desperately to count. But his brain was so addled, he couldn't.

'Anything?' the Master wondered.

The Doctor couldn't answer.

'104, cutesie,' the Master supplied, bopping him on the nose with his finger. 'That's adorable. You can't even think properly. Now, which one of those 104 guns do you think a Jack from the past would be most likely to use? Insert long pause here.'

The Doctor continued to grab at nothing inside his head. It felt like a sponge.

'Oh dear,' the Master said, and leant over to the machines, fiddling with something.

'What're you doing?' the Doctor croaked, unable to look.

'We need a little clarity, here,' the Master said. 'Just taking down your painkillers. It'll hurt, but thinking will be easier.'

A few seconds later, a wash of excruciating pain overcame the Doctor. He couldn't stop himself crying out, breathing heavily and contorting slightly from the agony of the amount of damage the humans had done to him.

'Work through the pain, you're a big boy now,' the Master advised, and then continued as if the Doctor wasn't contorting next to him. 'So. 104 possible guns. Which one was past Jack using?'

Thinking was much, much easier. 'K-Klasco ... ' he realised, stuttering the word out through the pain. 'T-time Agent st-standard ... issue. That was … was J-Jack as a … as a ... T-time Agent.'

'Much better, Borusa would be proud,' the Master said approvingly. 'So why would a Time Agent want to kill an innocent infant?'

The Doctor had utterly no idea. 'I d-don't ... know ...'

The Master adjusted the painkiller accordingly. The pain doubled. The Doctor nearly shrieked, but managed to contain it. 'Try again with less drugs?' the Master suggested.

'I … don't … know!' the Doctor gasped.

'You still can't remember. That's kind of tragic,' the Master mused. 'Let's go back to school. Time isn't linear. Everyone has their own line, moving around like a snake, and occasionally, the lines of each person overlap and circle around at different points in each other's timelines as they meet and part. There's a lot of room for error, and occasionally it happens, where someone's existence can't be continued without damage to time. The Universe tends to compensate around it - the egg isn't fertilised, things like that, but occasionally it can cause paradoxes. Our people used to maintain the timelines to make sure the paradoxes were avoided, but they got lazy, and then they died, and there was only you. You couldn't maintain them on your own, could you? So the paradoxes have been happening and you haven't been able to stop all of them without physical interference. So there have been some anomalies. These anomalies shouldn't exist, and the Time Agency picked up on that.

'Project Fateless. A Time Agency initiative to fix the anomalies, and it was a pretty heartless one at that. Because every millisecond of every day across the universe, children are born to parents. Some of these children, through no one's fault, are born inside these paradoxes, and it makes them an anomaly. They're called the Fateless. They have no proper existence. They just aren't real people, and with every action they take and every word they speak, they rip apart time itself. The Time Agency dealt with these anomalies in the only way they knew how. Project Fateless. A project with orders to hunt down every single child born as an anomaly and kill them to fix the problems. So the answer to the question "why was Time Agent Jack there to kill your son", is what?'

'He's … a F-fateless!?' the Doctor breathed, horrified.

'Exactly,' the Master replied. 'Glad you got there in the end. I'm happy for you.'

'How!?' the Doctor gasped. 'Alex … w-wasn't born in a … in a p-parad-dox. N-not a Fateless.'

'You think?' the Master wondered, and laughed. 'I'm sorry. That's funny.'

'How?'

'Your missing memory. The miscarriage. You entered a paradox the moment that baby was conceived, which if it played out, it would have resulted in the destruction of the universe. I thought I'd fixed your little problem by making Rose miscarry, but apparently not, as when Alex was conceived suddenly it's back. You've been living at the centre of a paradox for a very long time. Things are beginning to fall apart. The world around your son is in constant flux. Time dilation, memory loss, distortion of reality, people dying, people coming back, they're all symptoms of time trying desperately to compensate, but it can't. Time's got a wound it can't heal for as long as Alex stays in it. It's getting worse and worse and it will continue. And I think your son knows that. I think he's known all of his life. He's smart. Very, very, smart, and highly time sensitive. I have no idea how, but I think he's known for his entire life that anything he says or does is going to rip the universe apart a little more, so he decided he wasn't going to say or do anything. And actually, I think if you really think about it, you're going to realise that you've known all along too.'

The Doctor was crying, now. He didn't care. 'I c-can't,' he sobbed. 'I c-can't do that …'

'It's why you created Anzen. You designed that planet for children like him. It's their safe haven, and it's where Alex belongs. He's never going to be safe or happy with you. Those Time Agents on Project Fateless will keep coming to kill him, nature and the universe will keep trying to kill him, and he will keep saying nothing, because he can't.'

'B-but I c-can't. Not h-him. Anzen was n-never for h-him. He's mine. He's … he's my s-son.'

'I'm sorry,' the Master said, and actually sounded sincere. 'But you know what to do next. And you can't spend anymore time lying around here.' He got up and pulled out his laser screwdriver, pointing it at the machine. With a blast of laser, the machine hissed and sparked, and powered down. 'Time to get up and save a planet, Doctor,' he said, slipping his laser screwdriver back into his pocket. He then raised his wrist, where a wrist strap sat.

'W-wait,' the Doctor gasped.

The Master paused.

'Y-you're h-helping me. Why … Why are y-you help … helping me?'

The Master slowly smiled, not even looking up as he spoke his next sentence. 'Be patient. You'll find out. And it's gonna hurt me a lot more than it hurts you.'

'What does … what d-does that m-mean?'

The Master ignored him. 'Oh, and with all this distortion of time and reality and space and people, I seriously wouldn't let Sarah Jane get too attached to Harry. I always quite liked her.'

And with that, he tapped at his wrist strap, and disappeared in a wash of blue.

For several minutes the Doctor just laid there in the dark and in pain, staring at the ceiling. Then he got up.

It hurt. A lot. But he couldn't care less. He found his clothes, and centimetre by centimetre put them on. He got his belongings from a paper bag on the side and put them all in his pockets, before leaving.

The guard on his room looked surprised. 'I was told you weren't likely to get up,' he told the Doctor.

'I want to see my son,' the Doctor told him, trying desperately not to reflect the amount of pain he was in. It seemed to work.

'I'll escort you,' the guard said.

'No worry,' the Doctor replied, forcing a smile. 'Be five minutes. Want to see him.'

The UNIT guard didn't seem too happy with that. 'I can't let you …'

'Just need some private time with my son,' the Doctor clarified, maintaining his smile.

The guard sighed. 'Okay. Off you go, sir.'

The Doctor nodded appreciatively and headed straight to Alex's bed, which was obscured by curtains and yet another guard. It didn't take him long to get past him, though he did feel both of the guards staring at him as he pulled aside the curtain and stepped through.

There he was. His little boy, fast asleep. And suddenly he felt very, very sick. Because now the Doctor was actually looking at him properly, he realised absolutely everything that the Master had said was true.

He could feel it. He could smell it. Alex didn't belong in reality. He never had.

He was a Fateless.

He dropped to sit on the bed. His body was so, so painful, but his hearts were even worse. Then he was crying again. But he knew that he'd known it all along. He'd just ignored it.

He cried for a good few minutes. He was only lucky that the sound of the machines attached to his boy were shielding the sound of it.

Finally he stopped, looking up at his son. 'I'm sorry I never saw it,' he whispered. 'I'm going to go somewhere now, but I'm coming back, and I'll make you happy. I swear. I've been an awful, awful dad but I'm going to make it up to you. I'm going to take you to Anzen, and everything's going to be okay. You'll be able to smile. You'll be able to talk, and dance, and sing, and live, and thrive, and …' He stopped, choking mid-sob. '... I love you. I'm so sorry.'

He kissed the boy on the forehead. Alex didn't bat an eyelid.

The Doctor fished in his pocket for the bio-damper and party shimmer. He put the bio-damper ring on his finger, and activated the party shimmer. Immediately he felt that prickling sensation, and a mop of blond hair flopped down into his eyes. He pushed it back, and left out the other side of the curtain to dodge the guards. He grabbed a dressing gown from the nurse's station and donned it, gritting his teeth at the pain in his body before he reached the door of the ward.

People were milling around, but no one knew who he was. He kept himself to himself, all the way out of the hospital and to his family's room.

Dodging UNIT wasn't a problem. Some misdirection and he was back. Rose and Leah were both asleep. Leah had her biology-shielding pendant around her neck, the crystal rock glistening in the low-light.

He deactivated the party shimmer, and leant down to his daughter. With a pang of gentle telepathy he woke her up. She saw him. Her eyes widened in delight and she took a breath, about to say something, but he quickly shushed her.

'Tell Mummy when she wakes up that I've gone, okay?' he whispered.

'Are you gonna save the world?' she whispered back.

'That's the plan,' he replied. 'Be good. I'll see you as soon as I can. And keep wearing that pendant. Don't take it off for anyone or anything.'

'Okay, Daddy.'

'Good girl,' he said, kissing her forehead. 'Go back to sleep.'

She settled, and he tucked her in. He stood up, moving next to Rose. Very carefully, he placed his fingers on her temple, and drew up a memory she associated with being calm, so it would help dictate her mood when she woke up. He then implanted a small phrase in her head before he reactivated the party shimmer.

He kissed her, and left.