Author's Note: Hi to my reviewers for the last chapter - MayFairy, Omniac, KlinicallyInsaneKoschei and babybluepineapple. I seem to have lost a few reviewers lately (a message there for me perhaps, LOL - as in, people are thinking, if they can't say anything nice, they won't say anything at all, maybe?) That being the case, it's particularly nice to hear from you guys, you always cheer me up. Anyway, near the end now, so have to keep slogging on. Onwards and upwards!

Murray Gold and his terribly sad soundtrack to the Doctor Who episode "The End of Time", which I have been listening to on my MP3 player, are totally to blame for this chapter, I take no responsibility whatsoever. Murray - you rock!

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

The air was thick and oppressive, almost choking in its weight. The cessation of the drums had left behind a festering, brutal silence, which was almost more terrible than the pulsating beat it had replaced. Even though there were no clouds in the sky, the moon had inexplicably disappeared and the night was suddenly starless, unrelieved blackness swirling around the three companions as they hurried to the Doctor's side. He lay motionless within his bonds, so still, so very still, his face lifeless and unresponsive, his eyes closed.

"Oh gods!" Tejana said in anguish, carefully removing the now-loose golden sensor band from around his head. "Oh no. No, no, no! What has Rassilon done to him?"

Jack and the Master tore at the buckled leather straps which held him, struggling to release him. Gently, they lifted him down from the chair and laid him on the ground, his head in Tejana's lap. He looked so young in the dim light of the lantern, so absurdly young, hardly more than a boy. His face was bone-white, with dark shadows etched deeply under his eyes. His lips were dry and cracked, a thin, scarlet ribbon of blood running from the corner of his mouth. His breathing was shallow and laboured, rattling eerily in his chest.

Frantically, Tejana laid one hand on his forehead and the other on his chest, using the psychic link to ascertain the damage. What she found made the bottom drop right out of her world, her mind recoiling and screaming in a torrent of absolute grief.

"He'll regenerate, right?" Jack said desperately, seeing the devastated look on her face. "I mean, that's what Time Lords do. He's going to be OK, isn't he?"

Dazedly, Tejana shook her head, her eyes burning in agony. "He can't regenerate," she faltered, her voice catching sharply in her throat. "He's broken inside. He's got nothing left. The Time-fire...the Time-fire has destroyed him, beyond the capacity of his body to heal."

"You mean...he's dying?" Jack stuttered, the sheer enormity of the idea paralysing his brain. "No...that's not possible."

Tejana could not answer, she had no voice, her misery was too profound. The Master crouched down beside her, his hand comfortingly on her shoulder, his face tight with painfully suppressed emotion. Centuries of playing cat and mouse with the Doctor across the Universe, hundreds of years of constantly pitting their wits against each other. He had thought it would last forever. How could it end like this?

The Doctor moaned, his hand twitching as though he was trying to grasp something beyond his reach.

"Doctor? Doctor?" Tejana called.

At the sound of his name, his eye-lids fluttered open, his blue-green gaze dull and glassy, so different from the eccentric, lively intelligence which had sparkled there such a short time ago.

"Tejana?" he murmured hoarsely.

"I'm here!" she told him, tears on her cheeks even as she forced a bright tone into her voice. "I've got you."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he said. "I failed. I couldn't stop him."

"It's OK. He's gone. They've all gone. It's over."

He coughed weakly, more blood trickling from his ruined lungs. "No, you don't understand...it's too late, too late for all of us...the Temporal Nucleus was here on Earth...he destroyed it when he brought the Time Lords back. He's shredded the Web of Time beyond repair."

A chill chased up Tejana's spine. Her eyes flew to the Master's as the stunning realisation dawned on them. That strange, loathsome black obelisk, shattered now into endless particles...it had been the Temporal Nucleus all along. The pain and confusion in the air, the heaviness of the shadows, the darkening of the moon and the stars...Tejana had assumed she was sensing her father's imminent death. But suddenly they both knew it was more, so much more. It wasn't just the Doctor who was dying, it was the entire Universe. The threads of Time were slowly unravelling. Starting from the very beginning, history was being progressively erased and soon there would be nothing left.

A jolt of bitter irony struck Tejana like a slap across the face, the mocking echo of her own voice resounding in her mind: Don't you just love it when everybody lives?

"What does he mean?" Jack asked. "What was too late?"

"We were," the Master said harshly. "We stopped Rassilon too late. He's destroyed the Temporal Nucleus, the anchor-point of the Web of Time, and there's no way to replace it. The Web is already disintegrating, from the inside out. We're all dead."

"Sorry...Tejana...so sorry..." the Doctor muttered, his mind wandering.

"Sshhhhh!" Tejana soothed, numbly stroking his untidy brown hair. "Don't try to talk."

"No...the Master told me...about what happened when I was exiled to...Earth," he gasped. "I didn't know. I thought you were safe on Gallifrey."

She winced. "Oh, don't, please don't! It doesn't matter, really it doesn't...it was so long ago."

"It does. Of course it does," he retorted. "Left you...so many times. Trion...wasn't there when the Daleks came. Wasn't there...when you fell into...E-Space."

"Stop it!" she said tearfully. "Don't you understand? None of that matters! You're my father, the only one I've ever needed or wanted! I would never change a second of the time we've had together. You and I...throughout the whole of Time and Space...we were fantastic, brilliant...magnificent!"

The Doctor gave a crooked, painful smile. "We were, weren't we?"

Then he closed his eyes for a moment and his hand reached out and unexpectedly grasped the Master's. The other Time Lord tensed in surprise, but didn't pull away.

"So sorry for everything that happened...to you...Koschei. So sorry...it all went so very wrong," the Doctor sighed, his voice faint now. "Wish...it could have been different...for you...for us...my friend."

The Master sat silently, his eyes clouded with bitter-sweet memories from long ago, his throat choked with regret. But his hand tightened convulsively around the Doctor's...forever his best enemy, forever his best friend.

"Jack," the Doctor whispered. "I...treated you badly. Sorry...you were...one of the best men I ever knew."

"Because of you!" Jack answered fiercely. "Everything I am, it's all because you changed me, Doc!"

The Doctor gave a wheezing chuckle. "I keep...telling you...don't call me...Doc!"

Without warning, a savage tremor of pain wracked his thin frame from head to foot in a spasm of agony and his body went limp, as though all his bones had been broken.

"Doctor?" Tejana cried fearfully, feeling the life steadily ebbing from him. "Father!"

The light flickered briefly back into his eyes and he gave her one last smile.

"I love you," he said in Gallifreyan. "Daughter."

Then the cold wind blew over them and, with one final shudder, he died in her arms.

Tejana kissed his forehead reverently, tears pouring down her face. "I love you. And I will see you again soon," she promised, knowing that - even here, protected as they were at the heart of coincidence - it would not be long before the erasure of Time reached them.

Grief-stricken, she raised her head and looked at the Master. He was holding his free hand out in front of him, studying it with almost dispassionate curiosity. With a sharp pang, she realised that it was already less substantial than it had been, the outline of his fingers less pronounced, the skin becoming transparent and incorporeal.

"Looks like that bastard Rassilon got me after all," he said with a resigned note in his voice. "I always said he was a tosser."

Tejana managed to give him a watery smile, remembering how she had laughed at his joking comment in The Matrix. "At least you got him first," she said comfortingly.

His brown eyes met her blue ones and she caught her breath at the unprecedented tenderness she saw there. In that one transcendent moment, she suddenly saw deep within him that other Koschei from the Could-Have-Been-King's vision.

"My beautiful Ana," he said huskily. "You and me, huh? The Greatest Story Never Told. Who'd have thought?"

"Yeah," she responded softly. "Who'd have thought?"

He was fading rapidly now, his whole body becoming illusory, dream-like. Then his mouth found hers and he was kissing her. But this kiss was different, so different, from the ones he had given her in the past. For the first time, there was no force, no dominance, no desire to take or to own. Instead, the caress was warm and loving, conveying all that he could never put into words, resonant with all he could have been – all they could have been – had it not been for the drums. She closed her eyes, giving herself up to the sweet ache of it, matching him emotion for emotion, knowing he was saying goodbye. She felt the pressure of his lips growing softer and softer as his body became less and less tangible, until eventually she could not feel him at all. When she opened her eyes, he was gone altogether.

At that same instant, she felt the weight of the Doctor's head disappear from her lap and she knew that he too had been erased. She was alone with Jack, the psychic link echoing and empty in her mind, like a dusty old house abandoned by its occupants long ago. Trembling, determined to be dignified at the end, she climbed to her feet.

I will see you again soon, Koschei...I have to believe that there is something more for us beyond this!

"They were the same age," she said, looking over at Jack, her voice brittle and strained. "Funny, isn't it? All those centuries fighting across the constellations and they end up being erased from Time simultaneously. My turn next, I expect."

Sure enough, she could sense herself beginning to dissolve, her limbs etoliating, becoming lighter and more frangible with every passing second, her life and colour leeching away into the unrelenting air. Jack took two vehement steps towards her and seized her forcefully by the shoulders.

"No, this can't be happening! You can't just give up like this. You're a Time Lady. Do something!"

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light?" Tejana smiled sorrowfully. "I wish I could, Jack. But I'm a Child of Time, a creature of flux. Without the fixed point of the Temporal Nucleus to anchor the Web, there can be no Time. And without Time, I am nothing. It was always the eternal paradox of the Universe – the flux of Time abhorring the immutability of the Nucleus, but each unable to exist without the other, all in perfect balance."

"There must be something we can do, some way to repair the Nucleus!"

Tejana shook her head. "It's gone, completely destroyed. This is where it ends. All we can do is say goodbye."

Roughly, his eyes full of tears, Jack pulled her into his arms and clutched her tightly against his chest, as if just by holding her hard enough and long enough he could stave off the inevitable.

"Thank you, for saving the Master earlier," she said in a low voice. "I know he probably would never have done the same for you."

Jack gave a harsh, bitter laugh. "Doesn't that make me the better man?"

She reached up and stroked his face, her slender fingers almost evanescent now, her touch as light as gossamer. "It makes you an amazing man. But then, you've always been amazing, Jack...always."

Her delicate features were becoming more and more translucent as she spoke, her eyes two fathomless pools of blue in the white blur of her face, the long dark hair shimmering into a shadowy haze as she began to vanish.

"Guess this is it. See ya in hell, Jack," she whispered, using their old good luck saying one last time.

"Not if I see you first!" he returned brokenly, only to find that he was talking to thin air.

His arms were empty. She was already gone.