'Well…I say me, I really mean all of us. My race, I mean. The Time Lords.'

Rose cracked a smile. Just like him, she thought, to take full credit. Well, just like her Doctor anyway.

'Of course, I am the last of my kind. In the battle against the Big Bad, well…' Doctor Two paused for a moment, seemingly in quiet consideration as to how much information he should dispel. 'They're gone, my planet destroyed. And until tonight I thought old wolfy boy had gone with it.'

Rose was suddenly incredibly confused. 'No, no, no, no! Hold on a minute…' she paused to search her memory. 'The Daleks, the Time War. That was the end of your home planet. None of this…Big Bad Wolf.'

Doctor Two raised his eyebrows and scrunched his nose. 'Wha…what's a "Dalek"?'

That was the moment. The moment Rose finally got it through her thick head. She was not in the same Universe as she once was. And things, history, all of that, were completely out of whack with what she once knew. She felt stupid and lonelier than ever. She was in a strange house with a strange man in a strange world where the Doctor never fought the Daleks, where she never saved him from an awful death by an army fleet of them. In this world there was no Rose Tyler who absorbed the Time Vortex and saved the Universe. Why was it only now that this had fully occurred to her?

She broke her silent panic with stern resolve. 'The Doctor, my Doctor,' Rose didn't feel quite right in saying that anymore, 'his greatest enemies were the Daleks. A race of genetically engineered beings who were completely removed from emotion, from feeling and put inside these…pepper-pot looking encasements in order to take over the Universe. The Doctor…lost his planet in a war with them, but they survived. We fought them, the Doctor and I…and Jack, we fought them side by side. But they came back. They're half the reason I'm in this parallel universe.'

Doctor Two's mouth gaped slightly. 'Pepper-pot things? My greatest enemies were pepper-pot things? Well, that's just not right.'

Rose could see he was making fun. She did see the funny side, but knew how deeply terrifying these supposed pepper-pot things could be. 'Push off. As if the 'Big Bad Wolf' is any better.' She giggled slightly as Doctor Two returned her smile gently.

'I only call it the 'Big Bad Wolf' for lack of a better term.' Doctor Two became grim. 'They're words, just like any others, it's what's behind them that's important, meaningful. This Big Bad Wolf, it's older than language, older than words, but it took words and embraced them, used them to traverse, infect, spread. Like Carionites do.'

'What's a Carionite?' Rose asked out of pure interest.

'You'd probably call them witches, they use words as power, scientific formula's to create and manipulate. You'd call it magic, I'd call it a very ancient, yet very advanced form of science.'

'Ah…' Rose contemplated this for a moment. 'Werewolves, witches, next you're going to tell me mermaids and Santa Claus exist.'

'Well, in a manner of speaking, Mermaids yes. Santa Claus was a part of Christian mythos later sponsored by Coca-Cola who is actualised in the, er…say, late 40th century. But that's another story altogether.'

Rose smirked again. 'So it spread…like a virus…?' she pressed, knowing full well that she was giving him a bit of 'I told you so' in that remark.

'Ah…yes, a bit.' Doctor Two gave her a sly wink before continuing. 'So they adopted personages, legends, stories that spread wildly throughout our universe, and beyond. In some cultures they were a god-like figure who reigned over all, in others, they were the monster that hid amongst the trees, or under the beds. They resided atop tall mountains, under bridges, beyond waterfalls. They were tales that inspired fear in the bravest of hearts and minds. They would arouse the worst in the best of people.'

'…But they were actual beings, right? Tangible living things?'

'Oh, brilliant question. They were physical, yes. But they only took form in the mind. You couldn't see them. Or touch them. Or hear them. But you knew they were there.'

'Kind of like…madness?' Rose was trying to stay with him.

'Yes, a bit like madness. Some say they were the root of all madness. But, I don't believe that. Madness is separate, distinct, a fact of life. Natural, you could say. This, this was unnatural. Entirely unnatural.'

Rose felt an ominous chill fall over the room. Rose looked up toward the dirty window above the door, the only light source in the room. It was still night, yet the moon, a full moon shone bright as day through it. 'What you're talking about sounds like…sounds like Satan?'

'Oh no…no, no, no, no…' Doctor Two shrank back from the question. 'No, if you'd want to draw comparisons, it would be more like God.'

Rose gave Doctor Two a sheepish look and then proceeded to scan the room with a sudden feeling of being watched. 'So…you went to war with God, then?' Rose crossed her legs and bent forward, resting her elbow on her knee and her chin on her palm.

'This isn't a religious debate Rose.' Doctor Two talked down to Rose as she raised an inquisitive eyebrow at him. 'I'm simply saying it was omnipotent in its influence, and seemingly unstoppable. That is until it tried to infiltrate Gallifrey.'

'So it tried to destroy your home planet?'

'No, it tried to in-fil-trate it.'

Doctor Two often sounded out words as if he was speaking to children. I suppose I am a child to him, Rose thought.

'It was clever, it knew not to infect our minds. In stead, it embedded itself within the TARDIS's while they grew. It knew what we were capable of and it wanted to manipulate us in the same way it had the rest of the Universe. Its' patience outwore Time Lord life-spans, and soon those who newly imprinted themselves onto their TARDIS became imprinted upon by it. And entire generation of Time Lords imprinted by the Big Bad Wolf, and all they wanted to do was to consume the Universe and what lay beyond. We became our own worst enemy. A mutinous plague.' Doctor Two bowed his head in mute despair. 'War ensued.'

'A war of Time Lords, how…how' Rose was stuck for words. She wanted to say something like 'how awful that must have been' or 'I'm so sorry', but these words all seemed too small for the occasion. She knew what a grand person the Doctor was, and how much more great armies of his kind would have been. How brilliant, how savage, how magnificent. 'What…what did you do?'

Doctor Two looked up in a perplexing gaze that was filled with the rage of vengeance and sorrow. 'I sliced its stomach open.' His face fell and his eyes grew woeful. 'I was, I was one of the young, but I was given an old TARDIS, a faulty TARDIS…'

'The chameleon circuit…' Rose interrupted.

'Yes, it was broken. I travelled, my first journey. I met her.' He paused, his eyes shone with memories in the moon light. 'I took her home, I took her to Gallifrey to meet with war, and blood, and terror. The old ones against the young. I was pulled aside, I was enlisted, entrusted to do what was 'right', what was 'good'. I was given the key.'

Doctor Two looked on the verge of tears and terror. Rose had never seen even her Doctor in quite a state.

'She tried to stop me, but I told her it was the 'right' thing to do. I told her that I must. And then it was done. My home, destroyed. Gone.'

His head was in his hands. He didn't look up for a very long while. Rose's imagination filled with images of fire and blood and death, and she felt quite lost within them. Eventually Rose asked a very practical question. 'But…but how did that destroy it? I mean, how did you believe that destroyed it?'

Doctor Two looked up. His eyes were red and puffed. 'Well you see, the thing about fairytales is they can get their metaphors a little confused. The Universe was in a state of turmoil and the uninfected Time Lords were out to set things straight. They all converged on Gallifrey to heal the sick world. Gallifrey was Grandma's house. It followed the universe there. I trapped it inside, and I burnt the house down.'