A/N: This is a chapter that was written out of order to the last one. I started off thinking it was only going to be a wee chapter to lead into the fun and games of the next part, and it ended up being … well … a prequel to the other chapter I suppose…. I will see if I can re-arrange these chapters to make it fit.

If you see this as your first of two chapters, then it worked! And that also means that the following chapter will be one you've probably already read….

This chapter gave me a headache. It really did…. I'm not going to lie…. I hope it doesn't do the same to you when you try to read it.

I sinceriously hope that you enjoy this.

GK

~~oooOOOooo~~

Rose Tyler felt defeated as her parallel husband and captor wrapped his arms around her and began to sway them in place. She felt it to be more condescending than tender; more like a parent consoling an upset child than of a man embracing his lover. She suppressed her shudder at the notion. Tenderness wasn't exactly a strong weapon within the Doctor's arsenal. It was – if one would pardon the pun – an alien concept to him; this love, emotion, and tenderness thing. He tried, though. He tried hard…

…and he made mistakes. Big ones.

Part of her couldn't really blame him for it. How does a man, who was trained from birth to be an emotionless fool, suddenly and flawlessly embrace the moment and dive headlong into love without hitting his head on the floor and suffering a concussion on his way down?

The simple answer: He doesn't.

…Then again, neither could she. Despite everything that this man had put her through during their time together, she couldn't say that she didn't love him in some way. How could she not? He was the Doctor, she was Rose Tyler, and it was her job to make him better and to save him from himself. With the Doctor who held her in his arms right now, she'd failed that task…

…You had one job, Rose Tyler. Just one. And you couldn't even do that right…

But that all said; the other part of her blamed him entirely for this and called him a monster. The Doctor was experienced enough in his many centuries of travel to be better able to ward off any malevolent forces to not become the villain of the week himself. Or was he?

"It's either you die a hero," he said to her once at the close of a particularly heartbreaking adventure, "or you live long enough to become the villain."

Prophetic words, they were.

For a man who could see the timelines of everyone around him, it surprised her that he was unable to see that he would one day become the one thing he abhorred the most … all of it because of the one that he loved the most. And that – that – was absolutely devastating to her.

Was it arrogant of her to believe that; that she was the most intense love of his very many lives? Perhaps it was, but in those moments past where he held her thigh around his naked hip with one hand and clutched a fistful of their bedsheets with the other; when he desperately drove himself into her with tightly controlled passion over and over again; when he voicelessly cried out thanks to both of their deities as he spilled himself completely into her and then fell to kiss her with lips stained with salt from his tears; when he breathlessly declared his devoted and undying love for her as their final racing shudders slowed to heaved and sated breathing; how could she possibly assume otherwise?

Making love with this version of him, before he became the man dressed in black, had proven him to be the most passionate one of them all. Unlike his other parallel versions, this man was well practiced, and he knew exactly how to explore and ignite her body in ways no other man ever could.

Visions of their passionate couplings over the course of their relationship quickly filled her subconscious, and Rose actually licked at her lips with desire to experience each and every one of them all over again.

"We are so perfectly aligned, you and me," his voice suddenly purred across her mind. "The Sun and the Moon, day and night…"

It was at that moment that Rose realised that his temple was now pressed against hers. She quickly rolled her shoulders, lifted her hands, and shoved hard against his chest to escape.

"How dare you," she yelled as he staggered backward and she took a stride back. She lifted her finger to point at him with anger. "You did not have permission to go into my head like that."

He thumbed at his nose and smiled somewhat darkly. He lifted his head and looked down along his nose at her. "Oh my dear Rose. I don't require permission to wander around in that beautiful mind of yours. I have an eternal standing invitation."

She backed off a few more steps and shook her head. "No you don't," she corrected with a growl.

"Oh, but I do," he countered with a tsk in his tone. "When you agreed to a marital bond, you left that door wide open in a very permanent manner." He tilted his head and then tapped at his temple. "You have as much access to me as I do to you. So come on in, my dear. Come and see what you've missed this past while."

She narrowed her eyes. "No, ta. I don't fancy seein' what's in your mind right now."

He hummed his chuckle and then opened his arms wide to her. "Don't be like that, Rose. You've always enjoyed wandering in the brilliant landscape that is my mind."

"Yeah," she huffed out indignantly. "That was before you became a complete nutter and decided that I needed a telepathic chain around my throat so I wouldn't leave."

He rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Come now. That's a little dramatic, don't you think?" He pointed toward the door with an outstretched hand. "You're free to leave any time you desire."

Her eyes flashed wide and Rose immediately ran to the doors of the TARDIS. It was with thrill that she grasped the doors with both hands ready to fling them open and escape.

"Well," he drawled apologetically. "That is to say, you're free to leave once the TARDIS is on solid ground, of course. Right now we're in the vortex, which makes leaving somewhat…" The side of his mouth curled up into a smile. "Impossible."

Rose pressed her hands against the wood of the doors and felt the rumble of the vortex winds buffeting it from the outside. She exhaled hard as her head dropped low, speaking toward the floor rather than to him. "And I'll expect that also means that my Vortex Manipulator is somehow deactivated as well."

His voice ghosted hauntingly against her ear. "I'm very much afraid to say that's the case, dear," he said with false apology tilting his voice. He inhaled deep to speak on a sympathetic tone. "For your own safety, of course. We're in the funnel of the vortex. You Manipulator is designed to skim along the outer edges, not swim right through it. My darling, you wouldn't survive it even if you could attempt it."

"Then land the T-TARDIS," she demanded with a stutter. "I can find my way home then."

She shuddered when his hand skimmed along her side and then settled on her hip. His voice tightened to a grown against the shell of her ear. "I've just found you again, Rose. Do you really think I want to let you leave me again so soon?"

"But you just said that I wasn't your prisoner."

His voice sang against her ear. A soft melody of trills and falls. "You are free to leave any time you wish, Rose." He chuckled, released her, and then spun a single twirl of flowing robes back from her. "If you love her, set her free." He stood in a regal pose with his hand held toward her in an invitation for her to join him in a dance. "When she comes back to you – and my darling Rose you came back to me – then they're yours."

She shook her head. She still didn't turn to face him and when she spoke her voice was almost pitiful. "I'm not nobody's."

His brows lifted at that. He held off on chiding her grammar. "You're mine, Rose, as I am yours."

She swallowed thickly and pressed both hands to the door at her chest. She looked at the white painted wood. "Please, Doctor. I want to go home."

He shifted up against her back once more. "The TARDIS is, and always will be your home, my dear."

Her words hissed through her teeth in demand. "Land the TARDIS and let me go home."

His arm shifted to snap hard around her hip. He growled then he pulled her back hard against his chest. "Why are you being so selfish?" His breath was hot against her ear. "After everything I've given you; after all I've done for you: An extended life. Regenerations. My home. My hearts…"

"Heart," she corrected. "You only have one."

He huffed a snort against her ear and then shoved himself away from her, spinning again in place and finishing his dramatics with his hands on his hips and a lift of pride in his head. "Oh, my darling wife. So much has happened since we saw each other last. We have so much to discuss!"

Rose finally turned to face him, but she didn't move toward him. Instead, she pressed her back against the doors of the ship. "What have you done?"

His brows lifted high. "An accusation right off the block," he stated with humour. "You do know me so well, don't you, Rose Tyler."

"Unfortunately, I do."

He rewarded her with a smile and gestured toward the jumpseat in an invitation to sit.

"I'll stand, ta," she short back quickly, unwilling to leave the doors.

He huffed out a long suffering sigh. "As you wish." His eyes brightened and he clapped his hands. "Have I ever spoken to you about my friend Koschei?"

She blinked. Her voice sounded worried. "You mean the Master?"

He nodded slowly. "Yes, he has been known to call himself that."

"Your mortal enemy." Her voice was flat.

"He and I have had our disagreements," he admitted with a roll in his eyes. "Nothing that couldn't be overcome once we found that have a common interest."

"Which was?"

He ignored the question. "Once upon a time, Koschei and I were friends. Very good friends, in fact. I suppose in your culture we would have been considered best friends, although I do find the term to be rather deplorable."

"Yet you use it all the time with your companions," Rose said quietly.

He flicked a glare of annoyance toward her. "Using the term and actually liking it are mutually exclusive," he ground out with distaste. "While at that particular moment, the companion in my TARDIS was at the forefront of the rather small circle of friends that I had…"

"I get it," she cut in with frustration. "Your idea of a best friend is just whoever happens to be there with you at the time." When he didn't immediately argue that point, she raised her eyes angrily. "Can the same be said for who you take as a lover?"

"Are you suggesting that I wed and bond with any woman willing to share my bed?"

Rose merely shrugged. Petulance flooded her posture and attitude. "You tell me."

"Are you also suggesting that I will move heavens and parallel walls to seek just any woman who finds fancy in me?" His voice was becoming angered. "That I will work tirelessly, night and day, to do something anything that it takes to make sure that I am never separated from the holder of my heart ever agains.."

"Heart," she corrected sharply, driving home the point that he was no longer a Time Lord.

"Hearts!" he growled in correction as he rushed in a glide across the floor to approach and then loom over her. He took her hands and forced her palms against his chest. "Feel them, Rose. Two. Two beating hearts that can only … that will only ever be given once."

She gasped and swallowed her breath with a gulping swallow. Below her fingertips raced two strong beating hearts. She pressed her palms down more firmly to seek confirmation and slowly lifted her eyes to his. Expecting to see a manic and furious expression, she was startled to find nothing but pure adoration and longing within them.

"Twin hearts," he cooed gently. "Two hearts that beat for you, Rose. Feel them under your touch." He growled a pleasured sound in his chest and closed his eyes. "They've been waiting for you. Waiting for you to take them in your hands; to nurture them as you always have me."

There was confusion and worry in her whisper. "W-what? How?"

His eyes flashed open wide, and then softened. A smile stretched across his face. "You were devastated when you first came to me, Rose. When you fell out of the portal, off the edge of the cliff and then into my arms, you were a distraught and lost woman."

"You make me sound weak," she breathed out as she shifted her hands from his chest and let her fingertips slide down along his belly and hips to fall at her side. Her head fell to hang low.

"Heartbroken," he corrected with a light shake in his head as he lifted his hand to curl her hair behind her ear and guide her head back up to look at him. "You'd lost me, and then lost yourself."

He thumbed a tear from her cheek and lowered his voice to a whisper. "You were lost, Rose. You were in pain. How many of me had you said goodbye to by then?"

"Five," she breathed out sadly.

"And just how many now?"

Her voice was tiny. "Fifteen. And I can't…." She sniffed wetly. "No more, Doctor. I can't do it anymore. It hurts too damn much."

He snatched her into his arms and held onto her tightly. Thrill shot through him when he felt her arms circle up to return his embrace. "That's why I went to Koschei," he began gently with his lips against the top of her head. "You and I, Rose, we are eternal. Soul mates. Neither of us want to say goodbye. And now, thanks to Koschei, we don't ever have to."

Rose stilled within his hold. "What are you talking about?"

He began to lightly sway them both together as one. "The same way I gave you yours," he said against her ear.

"S-So, you can regenerate now?"

He hummed a moment, and then shook his head. "Unfortunately no," he admitted with a sigh. "I was able to revert back to a full Gallifreyan physiology … at least the physiology that I had before I became half human and half Time Lord."

"I don't understand," she whispered.

He shifted to rest his chin on top of her head and looked aimlessly out toward the front doors of his ship. "Time Lords only get 12 regenerations, Rose. Before I became me, I was on my Eleventh incarnation. After I was born, the Time Lord only had one life left to waste."

"But how did I get all 12, and you…?"

"You never had any to begin with," he breathed out. "You were born anew. A Babe fresh from the door to the Untempered Schism. Me, on the other hand. I still had the essence of my full Time Lord self inside me. My body simply reverted rather than rebirthed itself. I still only have one life, Rose Tyler."

"I see."

He pushed suddenly away from her. Excitement was on his face and in his dramatic movements. "But with Koschei, I can be born new."

Rose staggered backward, and didn't bother straightening up. "How?"

He stilled and regarded her somewhat warily. His voice fell to calm. "By taking the regenerations of another." He watched her eyes flash wide and her entire stature stretch up with protest, and held up his hand to prevent her from speaking. "I tried, you see, to take the remaining lives of the Doctor." He flicked his hand. "But I knew it was futile, of course. I've lived that timeline before and knew that it wasn't going to work." He chuckled. "But I played the game to Koschei's rules to make that old fool happy. To make him trust me."

Rose gulped.

"And I have to admit that it was quite exhilarating to mess with the head of my much younger self for a while." He laughed. "So very fun to torment him in the manner I experienced so many centuries ago. Oh, I was able to plot and counter every move he made – one step ahead at all times."

"But if you did that," she whispered. She then shook her head. "The Timelines…"

"I realize that, Rose Tyler," he huffed. "I am an experienced time traveller. I know that if I destroyed him when he was still such a youngster that I faced ruining everything…" He approached her and drew the backs of his fingers down along her cheek. "Everything that we had, have, and will continue to have together."

Her breath hitched and she flinched back from him, but she said nothing as she backed away

"But I had to play the game to win Kochei's trust, and to learn the secrets he had about drawing the regeneration power from another Time Lord." He smirked and tilted his head to one side, creasing a look of pure malevolence into his expression. "And I dare say that it is a rather exciting method."

"But you can't," she whispered.

His eyes flicked to hers. "Oh yes I can." He snapped his fingers. "With ease, dear Rose. As easy as you please."

She shook her head, her eyes wild with panic. "No, but you can't … the Doctor! He. He's you, and you … you're him."

He lifted his chin and started to laugh. "Oh my dear beloved. Your love and devotion to me, and to my fully Time Lord self are without equal." His laugh stopped and he lowered his head to regard her with a smile. "The Doctor really isn't in danger from me, anymore." His eyes widened and he lifted them to the ceiling with thought. "Can't quite say the same for old Koschei, however. I promise you that they will face off against each other in the future, and it will be interesting to note just which branch of the timeline's tree they'll take."

He blinked and looked back to her. "So many different pathways, dear. I cannot say for sure." He grinned. "But we can certainly take a trip along the Doctor's many parallels and find out, can't we?"

Rose's brows pinched tight into a perplexed frown. Her mouth gaped and she shook her head, but she said nothing.

"As I was saying," he began again as he made a slow approach toward her. His demeanour shifted from somewhat playful and open, to dark and stormy. "Trying to take any remaining regenerations that the Doctor has left really is a rather futile endeavour. He really has nothing left to give." He sniffed and slipped his arms underneath his robes to cross them against his chest. "One, maybe two. OR perhaps he's on his last and it will simply kill him."

He chuckled. "Not that that's without its merits, of course." He caught her furious glare and merely shrugged at it. "But it's a definite waste of my time and efforts. Not when there are other Time Lords for me to get my HP meter filled."

Rose shook her head. "No, Doctor," she corrected. "Gallifrey's gone."

His brow lifted. "And didn't I just clarify to you that I very recently spent some time with a previous of carnation of mine on a planet filled with Time Lords and Ladies?"

If at all possible, her confused expression deepened further. "But. But he said. I mean. I thought…" Her lips pressed together and jutted juicily outward, and her eyes widened impossibly. She looked to him with a myriad of questions inside her gaze, but was unable to properly voice any one of them.

His breath caught, held, and he rushed forward to pull her in against his chest. "Oh my beautiful dear, that expression, your utter confusion…"

"Mental," she breathed out pitifully. "Everythin' always so mental with you. Just when I think I have it sorted … you go and throw me something that proves I'm still an idiot."

"Not an idiot, darling," he cooed softly with a smile as he let his nose brush against hers. "But time travel is an intricate business. There is a reason that Time Lords spend more than a century at the academy." He chuckled and kissed the tip of her nose. His voice lowered to a whisper. "But I can teach you, Rose. Stay with me and I'll teach you all of the deepest and darkest secrets that Time has to hide." He sighed deeply. "We will have centuries together for you to learn everything there is to know about it. Millennia, even."

Rose shuddered. She kept her voice low. "But how, Doctor?" she queried. "How can we be together for millennia if the Doctor doesn't have regenerations to spare?"

He shifted his head to stroke his temple along hers. His voice was a low purr. "He's not the only Time Lord I can reach, Rose. Haven't you been listening t me?"

"F-From Gallifrey?"

"No," he answered with a chuckle. "If I could have, I would have. I accessed Gallifrey through the Matrix of the Time Lords…" He sniffed and shook his head. "It would be too complicated for me to speak to you about the very specifics of my torment toward my Time Lord self."

"Can't dumb it down enough for me, yeah?"

He whispered against her temple. "I wouldn't disrespect you by dumbing anything down for you, Rose. You are far too brilliant to be treated that way."

"Never stopped you before," she challenged. "You routinely looked at me like I was dribbling on my shirt."

"No, Rose," he vowed. "You misunderstood my expression."

"Oh, Please…" She sighed. "Don't bullshit me."

He hummed and looked across the console with an unfocused gaze as he shifted his cheek against hers. "There is a Time Lord," he began. "One left…"

Rose blinked. There was another Time Lord out there? Was it the Master?

Her eyes widened. If the Master was still out there, then the Doctor had to be told about it. He had to be warned…

"A-Another Time Lord?" She ventured softly. "Who?"

He heavily drew his temple down along hers and growled as his consciousness brushed up against hers, kissed at the very edge of her mind, and was then pushed back by another presence within. A young, inexperienced presence who could no more force him out of her mind than he probably could out of a room.

Amateur.

Although an amateur, this Time Lord was still inside her mind as the other side of a bond inside Rose's mind of the sort he hadn't seen since the days of Rassilon. An unbreakable bond that would only be severed when one side had died.

There were only two ways that a bond like this could be forged: a familial link of a child and his mother, or the marriage bond between two lovers.

Rose wasn't a mother. That much he knew for sure. Which left only the latter option.

This bonded presence of Time Lord who wasn't him – or any incarnation of him twisted at his gut and poked at the possessive animal within him. Whomever he was, the Valeyard would challenge, take from him any and all regenerations he had remaining, and then would toss him into the winds of the Time Vortex.

Before he could reply further to Rose Tyler, the TARDIS cloisters peeled out in warning. Immediately, he released Rose from his hold and ran toward the Console.

"We have contact!" he called out with a grin.

Rose walked cautiously toward the console. She made sure to be on the opposite side of the console to him, and looked around the console. "Contact with who?"

His smile was wide and his eyes dark as he shifted his attention toward her and toggled the switches in front of him.

"You wanted to know the identity of the unnamed Time Lord, Rose," he said darkly. The smile fell from his face and a sneer stilled his mouth. "I believe you may have already met."