A/N: It's been a while since I touched this fic, yeah? I needed to back off from it a moment and consider things a bit. But I'm back now... Hopefully with better ideas and a better plan of attack. It's still dark ... I warn you ... and some people might not like the depth of darkness ...

This chapter .. I make absolutely no apologies for. It might make some people squirm a little and I mildly apologise for that ... for everything else ... nope...

I certainly hope that you enjoy this chapter. I really do ...

~~oooOOOooo~~

His exhausted breaths drew in and out hard through dried and parted lips as he fell backward into a desk chair with enough force to roll it backward a good two feet. His hands came down hard on the armrests as his feet struggled to find purchase on the tiled floor. After finding himself secure in place and not about to continue rolling, he leaned forward in the chair and panted toward the ground eager to calm his breathing to something less than a heated pant.

"By Rassilon," he managed around a thick swallow around a dry tongue. "That was something else."

Doctor Song let out a long sigh of disappointment as she turned around to face him. She adjusted her off-white pencil skirt and lowered the hem, but not before ensuring that the seat of her pants was hurriedly corrected after being so forcibly shoved off to one side only moments ago.

"I'm glad you enjoyed yourself," she intoned rather blandly as she folded her arms across her chest and leaned her rump back onto the desk edge. She looked up to the ceiling of the laboratory and breathed out a long whisper. "At least someone did."

He held up a hand and gave it a light wave as he continued to try and wet his mouth to better wrap his tongue around the words he wanted to speak. "Enjoyment and simply sating a need for release are two very different things, River," he managed brokenly. He rolled his shoulders and slapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth in order to finally find the moisture he was seeking.

River watched him with a flat look, but an arched brow of analysis. "Are you saying that you don't enjoy what we share, Vale?"

He snorted what may have been a chuckle and shrugged. "The thrill I get from this is because of the cocktails of endorphins, oxytocin, epinephrine, dopamine, phenylethylamine…"

"Yes, yes," she muttered with a wave of her hand and a shake in her head. "I am a Doctor, Vale. I'm quite intimately aware of the various chemicals and hormones that are released during sex."

One side of his mouth lifted into a smirk. His eyes lifted to regard her, but his head didn't rise. "Then asking me if I enjoy what we do together is rather moot, don't you think?"

She gripped at the very edge of the desk either side of her hips and leaned forward to bring her head in line with his. "But it might make a girl feel good to know that she has a bit of a one-up on the basic standard physiological releases." She exhaled a breath and lifted herself back up to lean back on her arms. "That perhaps I might actually mean something more to you than a simple chemical release."

He eyed her suspiciously. His voice was cautious. "Do you want me to tell you that I love you?"

Her eyes widened slightly as she listened to him awkwardly sound out his question. She let out a hard breath, rolled her eyes, and then started to laugh with obvious incredulity. "Do I want you to…?" She waved her hand and shook her head. "Oh. God. No. I want nothing of the sort."

His posture slumped with relief and he exhaled the long breath he'd been holding. "I'm probably more relieved to hear that than I should be," he stated airily. He lifted a hand quickly to stop her from interjecting a retort. "That isn't to say that I don't care in some way about you, River, because I do." His eyes pinched and he bared his teeth in a wince of discomfort. "Love is just not…"

"Oh," she interrupted with urgency. "No. Vale. I don't want your love. Let's not confuse what we have here." She shifted a finger in between them both. "I've seen your love and the unreasonable jealous tendencies it brings out in you. Quite frankly, would rather not be a recipient of any of that thank you."

"No," he breathed out along an extended exhale. "You quite like your freedom to explore, don't you?"

"That I do, Sweetie," she purred in response with a wink in her eye. "That I do."

He pursed his lips and nodded. "So I'm forbidden to love you, Doctor Song," he sang cheekily as he leaned back deeply in the chair and slid his hands into his trouser pockets. He propped his feet up on the edge of the desk to the right of her hip and crossed his feet at the ankles. "Yet, there is a definite spark in your eyes that suggests that your prohibition doesn't extend to how you're supposed to feel toward me."

She slowly shifted her eyes from the tips of his Converse, along his leg and then up his still-heaving torso toward his face. She narrowed her eyes at the arrogance she could see in his relaxed slouch. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He quickly dropped his feet from the desk, leaned forward, and exhaled a long grunt as he hauled himself to his feet in front of her. "The jealous streak you have toward my wife is almost as vile as my own." He tapped at the very tip of her nose with his fingertip. "Don't think I haven't noticed."

Doctor Song leaned forward to push herself off the desk and lifted her chin to bring her face in line with his. "I don't have any reason to be jealous of Rose Tyler," she breathed out coyly. "Jealousy would suggest that I view her as competition." She lifted her shoulder and inhaled an arrogant breath. "Which I don't."

"Don't you?"

She let one side of her face curl upward in a wince of disgust. "Hardly." She curled her finger around his tie and drew it out from his blazer, watching intently as it slid silkily along her finger. She then lifted her eyes to his. "If I truly wanted to have you all to myself, then I would. She wouldn't stand a chance."

He snatched her wrist tightly in his hand and clicked his tongue. "That's where you're wrong." He roughly dropped her wrist and turned sharply on his heel to talk over his shoulder at her. "Rose Tyler is the single most important woman in my entire multiverse. Noone compares to her and none should even try to be. She's my wife and my entire existence all wrapped up in a magnificent little pink and yellow package."

She exhaled a snort through her nose. "Which might actually be believable if you weren't standing in my laboratory with your trousers still undone and your pants stained with ejaculate while your body still courses with the chemical cocktails of hard desk top sex."

He set his hands on his hips but didn't turn to face her directly as he spoke. "The chemicals of arousal caused by the hormone injections you gave me…"

"Which can be settled with you taking your wife when you get home," she completed harshly.

"Rose is a fifty-three minute drive from here," he countered. He looked over his shoulder at her. "And that's only when traffic is good."

"Then have a wank in the bathroom if you have so little control over it," she spat with obvious disgust. "You don't need to take a lover to take the edge off that." She looked him up and down with a look of repugnance. "You can make any excuse you want. I'm not buying it … and I'm pretty sure that she won't, either."

He blew out a breath that shuddered at the end. His inhale was slow.

"She knows, River." He turned to face her with an expression of remorse. "About us."

Doctor Song shook her head slowly. "She suspects something, but doesn't actually know for sure."

He pressed his lips into a thin line and tightly shook his head.

Doctor Song's eyes widened. The initial surprise fell to an expression of curiosity. "What makes you so sure that she knows?"

"Last night," he breathed out hurriedly. He drew in a long inhale that looked as though it physically hurt to breathe. "We argued. She made the accusation and I didn't deny it."

Doctor Song watched him inhale a deep breath of guilt. Her eyes flared in shock. "Oh tell me you didn't…"

He grimaced and nodded. "It just came out. I was still reeling over seeing my other self." He inhaled sharply; a gasp of anger. "Seeing how close I came to losing her to him…" He drew in a deep breath and exhaled a snarl through a curled lip. "He doesn't have any right to her. He gave up his right to her back on Bad Wolf Bay when he abandoned the two of us and all but demanded that we live out our happy ever after on the other side of a dimensional wall."

Doctor Song tilted her head curiously. One brow was arched and she spoke through inquisitively pursed lips. "Perhaps your wife doesn't see it that way."

He flicked his eyes angrily toward her. "Rose doesn't have a choice in how she feels about him and our situation," he said with a snarl. "She hates him as much as I do." His voice quietened, but held onto the checked fury. "I've seen to that."

Doctor Song smiled at the insinuation in his tone. She strode a slinky stride toward him. "Well," she purred as she drew her finger across the lapel of his blazer. "I'm pretty sure you aren't suggesting unsolicited telepathic conditioning, because that is a violation of the highest order amongst your kind, isn't it?"

He snagged her wrist in his hand and grinned into her face. "My methods are my own."

"As are mine," she breathed with a lick at her lip as her eyes fell toward his. "Oh Vale," she purred along a wanton breath as she shifted her mouth higher with the intention to capture his lips with hers. "You are positively…"

"Don't," he hissed out sharply as his hand curled around her chin and his thumb dug into her jaw. "That's an intimacy I won't share with you."

She shoved at his arm to remove his hand from her jaw. She stepped backward and rubbed at the sting in her jaw from the press of his thumb. "A kiss is hardly a deeper intimacy than sex, Vale."

He snorted and shook his head. "Sex is biological. It's nothing but a primitive base function ingrained in your species, and all species who use sex as a means of propagation." He flicked his hand at her as he walked back toward the desk. "Oh, but you humans – especially women – talk of sex and love like they are one and the same thing." He spun and pointed a finger at her. "But it isn't. They aren't. Genital penetration is just that: part a into slot b. You could have no feelings at all toward a member of your opposite sex yet still be able to rut each other into orgasm." He snorted out a laugh and looked to the ceiling. He pressed the tip of his tongue behind his teeth and smiled as he shook his head. He tilted his head back down to look at her. "It's such a primitive and primal function, in fact, that as you approach that final climactic end to the encounter – as the orgasm approaches – you lose all sense of propriety and control and give in completely to the act. Even if you wanted to stop, you can't." He smirked a one-sided grin. "Biology won't let you."

Doctor Song folded her arms across her chest and slouched to one side with obvious annoyance. "Is that so?"

Vale smirked and quickly moved across the white tiled floor to approach her. He winked at her sudden intake of breath and cupped her face in his hands. "Conversely," he began huskily. "Kissing is a voluntary action. It's a learned behavior, not a biological one." He dipped his face close to hers, but didn't move close enough to brush his lips across hers. He remained close and kept his voice low and husky. "Kissing is more intimate because it's completely voluntary. There is no biological imperative to do it. A kiss' only purpose is for intimate contact."

She inhaled an audible breath and lifted her chin higher to seek out his mouth. His name was on her lips as they puckered to reach for him.

Vale chuckled and pressed his finger to her lips. He opened his mouth to pepper out a series of negative sounding exhales through his open mouth and then stepped backward. "No, River."

"I hate you," she breathed darkly in response as she felt his retreat.

He grinned and waggled his brows. "No you don't."

She snorted and shook her head with a defiant lift in her chin. "I wouldn't be so sure about that if I were you."

He gestured toward the desk with a lift in his own chin. "And then, so that? What do you call our weekly desktop rendezvous then?"

"A primitive and primal biological base behavior," she shot back with a smirk and an arrogant tilt in her shoulder. "Nothing more than that."

He had to laugh. "Quite right, too."

She opened her mouth to retort, but was cut off by the sounds of a petite redheaded woman in a labcoat and heels barreling in through the doors.

"Doctor Song!"

She snapped her attention from the grinning man ahead of her and tilted her body to the side to look around him. "Caitlin. How many times have I told you not to interrupt when Mr. Smith is in a consultation with me?"

Caitlin gasped shortly and held a tablet against her chest as she flicked her eyes toward Vale. There was apology behind her embarrassed flush, but she chose not to vocalise her apologies to him directly. Instead, she looked back toward Doctor Song. "Sorry, Doctor Song. I'll insist to you that I didn't choose to interrupt you lightly." She held out the tablet to River. "Our sensors detected a massive energy burst that I …" she swallowed and flicked her eyes toward Vale. "That I think you'd want to know about sooner rather than later."

Doctor Song tapped Caitlin on the shoulder to command her attention. "Look at me when you're talking to me, Caitlin, not toward Mr. Smith."

Caitlin blinked rapidly and shuddered when she looked back toward her boss. "Again, I'm sorry, Doctor Song. But the energy burst. It might have something to do with…" She stuttered a few light breaths and then swallowed thickly. "Well. You know."

Vale moved quickly from where he stood and took position next to Doctor Song. He let his eyes shift quickly over the information on the tablet and rather rudely moved in his hand to zoom in and swipe through the information.

He didn't like what he saw.

"What?" His eyes narrowed. "No-o-o-o," he drawled with disbelief as he snatched the tablet from Doctor Song's hand. "That's impossible."

Doctor Song let out an impatient and irritated breath and attempted to snatch back the tablet. "Do you mind?" she growled in annoyance.

"Actually, I do," he answered with distraction as he continued to swipe and zoom in on the data on the screen. After a moment he looked toward Caitlin and turned the screen toward her. "How accurate is this data?"

Her mouth flapped a moment and she held up both hands in a clumsy point toward the tablet. "As accurate as it can be, I suppose."

"Rubbish response," he countered back with a hiss. He pointed at the data. "This says that the energy within the burst was Artron."

Caitlin nodded. "Yes. That's right."

Vale lifted his brows. "And just how do you know about Artron energy?" he queried in a slow and condescending tone. "How, when Artron isn't known to exist in this universe?"

Caitlin looked with wide eyes toward Doctor Song, who merely rolled her eyes and let out a huff. She held her hand out in a request for the tablet. "Give me the iPad, Vale."

He defiantly held it off to the side and narrowed his eyes at her. "Are you from across the parallel walls, River?" he questioned with cold suspicion.

Her eyes hardened with his obvious accusation. "I most definitely am not from any universe other than this one," she shot back with a hiss in her voice. "Now give me my tablet, Vale."

He lifted himself back to a stand and allowed himself a moment to loom over her. He lowered his head to whisper hotly against her ear. "I've never told you about Artron energy. How could you possibly know the particle composition of something that doesn't exist in this universe?"

"Obviously, it exists," Doctor Song snapped shortly as she snatched the tablet from his hand and tucked it under her arm. She shifted her arm back when he tried to reach for the tablet once again. Her eyes flared in warning. "No. You don't get to continue to ferret your way through my data and make your suspicious accusations. This…" She indicated the tablet still tucked under her arm. "…is none of your concern."

"Artron energy is every bit my concern," he countered aggressively as he tried again to retrieve the tablet. "It's radiation from the vortex of time. A remnant from the gates of the schism at Kasterborous." He blew out a breath through pursed lips and flicked his head to one side. "Kasterborous doesn't even exist in this parallel. So it absolutely shouldn't be leaking through into this universe."

He began to pace a little. "Because if it's leaking into this universe." His eyes flared. "Well. That means that…"

Doctor Song's brows lifted curiously. A smile danced upon her lips. "Am I hearing you correctly? Did you say that Artron is energy from the Time Vortex?"

"Yes. It is." He grimaced and shook his head as his pacing intensified. "How can there possibly be a radiation level high enough level for you to be able to pick it up on your sensors? For that ... well … That would have to imply that there's been a projectile of sorts that's passed through the vortex and into this temporal location."" He twisted his head toward Doctor Song and held out his hand in a request for the tablet. "I need to see that data. I need to know where the blast was centered," he growled urgently.

"So you can try and harness that energy for yourself?" she queried within a song. "Oh, Vale. I really don't think that's a good idea."

He flicked his hand more urgently. "Don't be stupid. You can't actually harness Artron. Well. Not by any means available to your species at this stage of your development. You'd all blow yourselves up if you tried anything like that with the meagre technologies that you have on hand."

She blew out a hard breath of annoyance through her nose and handed back the tablet. "But I suppose you're perfectly capable of it," she droned sardonically.

He rubbed at his chin and shook his head as he analyzed the data on the screen. "No, and I wouldn't dare try it. In order to safely harness pure Artron I'd need access to the Eye of Harmony, several very complicated regulators and waste radiation disposal vessels as well as an appropriate transdimensional containment unit." He lifted his eyes to hers. "Do you happen to have anything of that nature anywhere in your laboratory?"

"You mean like a TARDIS?" Doctor Song queried quietly.

He stilled at the suggestion. His eyes locked onto her mouth as though willing her to make that suggestion once again.

She let one side of her crimson lips twist up into a smirk. "Do you think there may be one nearby?"

He broke from his frozen stance. He frowned and shook his head. "Don't be daft. There's only one TARDIS lef tin the entire multiverse and I doubt very much that the owner of that magnificent machine has found his way through the walls of this dimension."

"If this Artron is leaking…" she curled her fingers into a gesture of quotation. "As you put it … into this universe, then wouldn't that be an option?"

"Passing through the walls is impossible." He blew out a breath and widened his eyes as his voice took on a breathy tone. "Well, okay, we've cracked the walls enough to get one or two bodies through the fractures with a hopper or two, but a TARDIS? No. She's too big, and anyway, the old girl wouldn't let him even try." He scratched at his sideburn. "So he couldn't pass through. He wouldn't. It's impossible." His eyes widened as his voice slowed and quieted. "Oh. Oh. No. Yes. No. Yes, he would. He could if he could lock onto the residual vortex wavelength of another traveler heading across the walls."

Doctor Song looked at him with a frown tightening across her brow. "Vale?"

"Oh," he growled. He was obviously still only entertaining the thoughts his own mind and ignoring everyone else. "Oh you did it, didn't you? You locked onto our signal to break through the walls." His lip curled into a snarl. "And now you think you can come back and take her from me." He dropped his chin and glared toward the doorway as though it was his most mortal enemy. "No. I won't let that happen."

Doctor Song let out an impatient breath. "Vale. What are you on about?"

Vale launched suddenly from where he stood and disappeared through the doorway to the laboratory with a thunder in his footfall and a whip in the back of his blazer. "I don't care how many regenerations he's got left, I'll kill him until he's dead."

Doctor Song blinked and let out an airless cough as Vale ran out of her clinic toward destination unknown.

"Caitlin?" she called softly. "The Artron burst. Where did it happen?"

"The Smith house," Caitlin answered softly. She swallowed thickly. "Do you want me to send a team after him?"

"Yes," she answered softly, her eyes on the empty doorway. "But remain out of sight. Only surveillance of their property for the moment." She exhaled a breath. "If we're very lucky, then his counterpart has already left with that little blonde twit and we'll have a man on our hands bent on vengeance and willing to do whatever he can to breach the walls of the dimensions to get her back."

"And then destroy the man who took her," Caitlin offered softly.

"And then we can destroy him," Doctor Song sang out cruelly. "And take control of the most powerful weapon in the Multiverse."

"Weapon? I thought the TARDIS was a ship?"

She looked to Catilin with a wink and a smile. "Time machine, Sweetie." She looked back to the doorway. "If one can control time, then they have the greatest weapon of them all." She flicked her fingers toward the door. "Well? What are you waiting for? Go do my work…"

Caitlin winced as she shook her head. "There is something else, Ma'am."

Doctor Song hummed with question.

Caitlin held out her hand for the tablet, and then let her fingers dance across the glass screen in a practiced routine of taps and swipes. After a moment she turned the tablet and handed it back to her boss. "The subject in Sub-Level 10. Our primary source for the Lindos you're injecting Mr. Smith with." She jutted her chin at the image on the screen of a body covered in a white sheet. "He seems to be waking from the coma."

Doctor Song's brows knitted together and her lip curled with impatience. "Well then increase the dosage of his sedative. Keep him under."

"If we give him more," she advised cautiously. "Then we trigger a massive Lindos dump into his system." She swallowed thickly and shrank lightly under River's wide-eyed and shocked expression. "He started to glow, Doctor." She lifted her hands and looked at them with horror. "It was rippling underneath his skin. Two of our collection machines exploded with the sudden massive increase in production. We finally managed to hold it at bay and rid his system of it, but we're going to be unable to continue keeping him completely comatose."

Doctor Song winced, but nodded. "But we can keep him under?"

Caitlin nodded. "I think so. The paralytic is still holding, so even if he does break through and regain consciousness, he'll be unable to do much more than move his eyeballs."

"Good to know."

Caitlin thumbed to the doorway. "Anyway. I'll head off then?"

"Yes, Caitlin," Doctor Song replied quietly as she let her eyes trace over the greyscale image of the man lying on a gurney thirteen storeys below them. "And thank you for keeping me posted." Her eyes flicked up from the tablet. "And continue to update me, please. If we find that we have to neutralize this man, then I want to be the one to do it. Understood?"

Caitlin nodded quickly. "Understood, Doctor."

"I need to make sure of that," she pressed. "Killing a time Lord isn't as easy as you think. It has to be done in a very specific manner in order for it to hold."

"Like a werewolf," Caitlin muttered under her breath.

Doctor Song snorted, but chuckled. "Something like that, although it takes more than a silver bullet."

Caitlin nodded. "I'll make sure that all staff are made aware of your mandate. Immediately ma'am." She then turned and strode briskly toward the doorway, leaving River Song alone in her office with the tablet in her hand.

She sat back on the edge of her desk and used the swipe of her fingers to zoom in tight on the image of her prisoner. "Look at you," she commented with a tilted head as she turned her fingers on the display to turn the picture into a portrait image of the sleeping man.

With the High Definition feed from the laboratory, she could see the increased rise and fall in his chest that indicated an elevated respiration rate consistent with a man breaking free of a coma. She pursed her lips and let her eyes wander up to the young man's closed eyes. His face was obscured by thick and course hair across his jaw and underneath his chin, and curtained by long, billowy chestnut hair that stretched as long as his waist, but she could still see his face as clear as the day he was brought in. Behind all that facial scruff and chestnut hair were sharp, handsome, roguish features that could very likely stop a girl's heart and make her fall desperately in love with him. In any other life he would've made a perfect male model or a playboy… In any other lifetime…

She pursed her lips with analysis as she watched his chest heave and his mouth open to exhale a glittering breath up toward the camera.

"I wonder why, now, you've started to wake up," she muttered to herself as she used the swipe of two fingers to zoom yet closer to the man's face. "In over five years you've never shown any life in you at all. Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. Why now?"

The glittering on her screen finally dissipated enough that Doctor Song could see the movement of his eyes underneath their lids. It was a frantic left to right zig-zag movement typical of REM sleep, and gave her no real indication of an imminent rousing. At least not until the movement suddenly ceased and his chin lowered slowly to that his brows were more in line with the camera's eye than his eyes were.

In a breath that immediately held inside her chest, Doctor Song watched with panic as his eyelids snapped open to reveal a bright glowing pair of amber eyes half shielded by his brows staring directly into the camera lens.

A single whisper of a word shot across Doctor Song's mind. "Father…"