Author's Own Disclaimer: I have been writing Doctor Who stories for nigh on to twenty-five years. This wouldn't be impressive, except that I'm not as old as David Tennant. So, basically, they taught me to write and this is what I did with it. However, unlike some big-name-fans from back in the day, I did not go on to become a TV producer when I grew up (stupid me) and therefore I do not own Doctor Who. I'm doing the disclaimer at the top of this chapter because it's about time. Also, because I need to let you know: if you have ANY questions, about Doctor Who, about Torchwood, about UNIT, about ANY of this, NOW is the time. Please email me or review or PM me or post them to boards the others frequent or SOMETHING. I do NOT want to leave anything out. Except Gwen/Gwynyth because I blame the Rift entirely for that. Anyway, still don't own Doctor Who. However, if you are or will be or have been the owner of Doctor Who/Torchwood and would like me to write for it, please let me know because I accept.

As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. New challenges for May have been added! Due to lack of response, at least one of April's will remain up. The new set will run through the end of May. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review.

Chapter 25: Run

"I need a favor," the Doctor told the strange time traveler who stood in his shadows, waiting for them quite impatiently.

"Yeah, well, I'm already in this too deep, kid, and I'm pretty sure another paradox here will blow up the planet. It'll make my friend mad, he likes the place."

"Can't blame him for that," agreed the Doctor. "This is just a little thing. Every sentient thing on the planet that's the slightest bit time-sensitive is going to turn up in about fifteen minutes. I need you to tell the ones with two hearts that I went that way." He pointed back over his shoulder, toward where the hotel was, so that made sense.

"Is that where you're going?" the man asked, definitely amused.

"Sorry, nope." He grinned winningly and popped the 'p'.

The man shook his head. "I don't want to know. All right kid, you fix reality and I'll buy you some time... wait, anything that's time sensitive?"

"If it's sentient."

"Oh, thank god."

"Why?"

"There are some nasty critters here about that I suspect might be a bit sensitive. None of us want to meet them en mass. But they're not really sentient, so I'm pretty sure we'll be fine."

"Humm," the Doctor said, looking thoughtful. "If you have any backup, you may want to call it, just in case." He reached out and took Rose's hand. "We'll go handle this. If you're sure it has to be me."

"Sorry kid, you've got to save the world. Sometimes you have to clean up your mess even if you didn't know you were making it."

The Doctor sighed. "That's the trouble with time travel," he said. "Sometimes you have to clean up your mess long before you get around to making it. Look, I owe you a favor."

"Don't suppose you'd give me a ride?" the man asked.

"You'll probably miss your friend, if I do, don't you think?"

"Good point. Well, I'll put it on your tab, then, kid. Come see me when you're older and I'll buy you a drink."

If the Doctor hadn't known Rose, that comment would have gone right over his head. As it was, he understood it, she could tell, only because she was giggling. He rolled his eyes. "It's the hair, isn't it?" he asked tragically. "I should cut it."

"Don't you dare," they both ordered at once, Rose because she felt she had a right, the strange man because he was apparently quite taken with the Doctor's ebony on alabaster beauty.

"Next time I see you," he told the stranger firmly, "I'll have it cropped."

The strange man started to say something, apparently thought better of it, and said, instead, "Yeah, you do that." Then he turned away from them and moved out into the trees a little ways, probably to summon the back-up the Doctor had suggested.

"Are we going now?" asked Rose. "He said I have to hold your hand."

"Probably to keep me from passing out." He shuddered reflexively, then ran a trembling hand up to shove away his hair. "Great big bloody coward I am, don't you think?"

"Honestly?" she asked. "No, I don't. Nice thing about this link, Doctor, is I can sense your motives. Yeah, you're afraid, but you're afraid for the right reasons. Hell, I'm afraid, too. I don't want us to be separated. We belong together."

"I know. But that bloke's right about one thing. If we don't close this schism, your reality will get caught in mine when it goes up. I didn't think about the consequences, just swept you under and now..."

"Oh, no you don't!" she snapped. "You're not going to feel guilty for bringing me into this. The only thing you ever did before you told me you were an alien was snog me. I got into this with both eyes open, and I'm not looking back. If it's got to be us against Gallifrey and Earth and everything in between, then, so help me, it will be."

"Thank you," he said with feeling and hugged her tight, resting his forehead against hers and breathing deeply as if inhaling her conviction along with the air around her. "This is what will happen, listen. That thing is going to be a bit of a problem, wrestling it into its box. I can't tell you what we'll see. Possibilities and impossibilities and dead-end time lines and futures that could never happen. Worlds inside worlds inside ideas. But once we get it closed, we need to run. Very quickly and very quietly. We need to get down to the waterfront. The capsule is there and we're going to take it."

"Hope you know how to fly it."

He laughed a little and pulled her the rest of the way into his embrace, resting her head on his chest. "Yes, I can 'fly' it. I'm actually quite good, I've been told, for a... oh what was it... 'deranged child with no concern for the laws of temporal physics or any other laws for that matter.'"

She giggled. "He called you deranged to your face? Oh, no wonder you don't like him!"

"Actually, I'm quite fond of Lord Borusa and I suspect he rather likes me more than he wants to do. We just exist in a mutual wary respect." He shrugged. "He may become a very powerful Time Lord before it's all said and done, but I expect him to usually do the right thing, even if it makes no sense to anyone else at the time."

"Yes, but he failed you on your exam," she reminded him. "Even after he said you were good."

He sighed. "I firmly maintain that no capsule Type-70 or higher is ever going to like me. I'm too fond of the older models and they can sense it. The capsules have a sort of telepathic field. They're grown, you know, not built, and the older they are, the more interesting the field becomes. Almost as if they're really alive." He took her hand again. "But I'm being ridiculous, everyone says. They're just programmed to imitate sentient life is all." He frowned and tugged his hair back again. "All right, let's go, there's no sense standing around."

He let her lead him because he wasn't physically capable of walking toward the thing of his own volition. They cleared the trees and the light was abruptly visible. The Doctor, breathing heavy and harsh beside her, looked around the clearing, at the opposite trees, any where but right at the light. He was planning to leave that until the last possible minute.

The time traces around the scene became visible to him - and her through him - by the bizarre lighting cast by the anomaly. Each trace showed the vague half shadow of a man - all somewhat familiar, all a bit strange. Each had the hand of a companion or two, and each approached the thing on tenterhooks. They weren't real, they were gone, but the Doctor could see clearly where they had been. The images were translations of what the time lines said, shadows of things that had gone before.

There were twelve distinct lines. "Twelve," the Doctor said, his voice baffled and maybe a bit angry. "One of them slipped past me and the others as well. Zedric and Koschei tracked down two. There were two today, the one at the pizza place last night, the one at the other pizza place. One each we saw at the library, at the chippy, on the way back to the hotel. And two when I first met you. I can't imagine how one of them could slip past me. But there's his trace... oh. He was the first here, after me. And, if I'm not mistaken..." He blinked and shook his head to clear it. "He's the oldest, the one who closed the paradox on the other end. No wonder so many of us have been turning up."

Rose realized it all at once, and it shook her to the core to know it. These various people turning up weren't actually merely different Time Lords. They were her Doctor, all variations of him, bits of his future colliding with his past. It was too weird to be believed, and some of it, she didn't dare think about at the moment. Instead, she asked, "But how will that work, Doctor? Won't that be another paradox, all these different versions of you turning up? I mean, you'll remember it, right? So you'll know not to get into the paradox in the first place, so you'll not have to come here, so you won't know... God, it's giving me a headache!"

He sighed wearily, sounding utterly defeated. "It's this nexus, a central point. It's causal, it means that everything that happens has to happen and can't be stopped. This time line, as I told you, allows for the mutually exclusive. Anything can turn up here, even if it can't possibly turn up here. The minute these other mes left this time line, the nexus closes for them and the memory is erased, because to them, it never happened in real time, just in the nexus. They and anyone with them go right back to whatever they were doing before they felt the nexus open against their time lines and moved to set it right. It required every last one of me to contain and close it, and to protect that, the nexus included the erasure of it. Simple quantum physics. Can't see the cat in the box, because the cat is only real so long as it's unobserved."

"Well, you didn't do it half-way, did you?" she asked, observing through his eyes the muddled, mingled images.

"No," he agreed sadly. "Looks like I managed to... oh, I can't even tell what I've done. It looks almost like... this is mad. I got caught up in a major temporal event with my future along for the ride?"

"Don't worry about it," she pleaded. "Look, just, how did they close it, so we can do it too and get out of here. I'm too scared to stay any longer."

"Right," he agreed. "I just have to touch it, that's all. You shouldn't have to do... well, it looks like one of the people with me had to touch it and..." He narrowed his focus on one particular time line and checked it against the associated lines with it. "I think it's the bloke who looks like the bloke in the military coat. He touched it, too. Must have been required. You may have to after all. I'll know as soon as I touch it, though." The time lines were so blurry and hazy but he could make them out relatively clearly, anywhere that they weren't deliberately skewed to protect the nexus.

"All right," she agreed, and squeezed his hand. "I love you."

He took a deep, shaky breath. "I love you too," he whispered and let her be his courage.

His eyes turned at last to the nexus and his stomach immediately tried to revolt. Rose clung to him, let her calm and wonder wash over him, breathed deeply and slowly.

Then, unable to help it or avoid it, she looked, too.

Reality went mad.

Eternity washed through her, summoned her; she belonged to it, child of sealed paradox, born at her own hand, created in the moment of her death to bring life. She died, oh she died, a dozen times in an instant, a mistake here, a murder there, an enemy here, for his sake, again, again, again. She died and lived and he lived and...

EVERYBODY LIVES, ROSE!

She was a northern star, not a girl, never a girl, never so mortal, but always so human, never not human, always be human because human is, human must, human is Rose is human...

Everything she does is so human.

Never simple, never small, and only to hold his hand because he must have a hand to hold because he burns at the heart of Time and he is the only living thing and I have died so many times and lived for them and died for them. See you in hell. And though I have all knowledge and though I give up my body to be burned and have not love...

I think you need a Doctor.

Doctor, a Doctor, this Doctor, that Doctor. Her Doctor. And she has loved him before already and never met him before and she has always wanted to know him because she knows him and will know him in all his infinite permutations and the moment before that end where he dies of her, she will see it all and love it all and be it all and she will become what she is because what she feels for him is more than even she knew...

I lo... I love you

Quite right too. Because it is right, it is his right and he hates it and will hate it and the only thing he will ever hate is himself. Everything else is love that must never be spoken because everything he loves dies. One heart belongs to you, the other to the Universe, hold the one you have and hold his hand. Everything belongs to him, was given to him before and after and time and again, given to him by his father, brought to him by his mother, the judgement his because he is alone. He must destroy because the fire and the water purify and wash it clean and it is a cancer and he is a surgeon, the healer for all reality...

I want you safe. My Doctor.

She brings life and death follows him and they must dance because the Universe will implode if the Doctor does not dance and... and... and...

The truth swept her under.

Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me I don't like it. Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and have a jelly baby because a man is the sum of his memories. A Time Lord even more so. Never more a butterfly, days like crazy pavement. I am the Doctor!

Oh, she knows.

Time itself hangs on her every mortal breath because someday everything is hers and she will choose you alone above all creation. What you have done what you have become what you must be and will be and everything comes to dust and you must choose when and she will choose you. She made you and you made her and it is perfect balance and perfect sacrifice and Time folded in on itself, the ending in the beginning in the parting of the ways...

I create myself.

"You were fantastic. And you know what? So was I." Ok, now you've done it say something witty. Flirt with her, she likes that, the most flirtatious line you'll ever know, "Hello, I'm Cap..." No, not yet, stupid. "Oh, new teeth..." Even stupider...

He's left me...

Rose, my Rose, my precious girl, I can't leave I won't leave, not you, not ever. Dance with me be with me I am me. One hand reach out, one word, just one.

RUN.

The dream exploded around Rose but she could see her way through, now. She gave the Doctor everything she had and he reached, desperately, with their joined hands, using her eyes because his were on things she didn't want to see. She didn't want him to see them, either, so she clung to him, drew him to her, hoping even if it killed her to always be with him forever.

Their hands shook and grew so very cold and then, with a sensation of reaching into the sky from under water, they collided with the anomaly. In that single instant, she heard a song, still and silent, infinite in its loneliness. Music filled her, the moment at the other end of this paradox, where a man alone for generations returned his life from the despair of ignorance to the abject misery of knowledge, howling against the truth every bit as bitter as the falsehood he had ached to leave behind. A single, small clock chimed off the hour, so many unfathomable, ephemeral hours from now. The sound she heard then had haunted her dreams all her life. The smell of time and wonder wreathed around her as that unearthly roar filled the world at the other end.

Tick, tick, tock, and it was done.

The anomaly collapsed back into nothingness without even a ripple. The Doctor sagged against her and Rose ached to collapse into him. They shook themselves and stared, blinded, into the sudden darkness, feeling rather like they'd just walked through hell, lengthwise.

"We have to go," the Doctor whispered, his voice breathless and somehow as pale as his face. She nodded and, stumbling at first, they ran, desperation and sudden adrenaline wiping away fear and questions as one.

They charged on as fast as their bodies would take them, making for the water front, trying to avoid being caught or seen by the simple expedient of dodging through human crowds. No one tried to stop them.

They ran.

They were never going to make it, Rose realized. This was such a mad idea, but it had made so much sense at the time. Still, they carried on, letting hope and passion and fire drive them to move faster. Rose had a stitch in her side; the Doctor's respiratory bypass was operating at intervals that seemed more arrhythmic than the anxious pounding of her heart.

The water front was in sight, but Rose didn't see anything that resembled a space craft, even as the Doctor noticed a large, out of order vending machine standing against a handy wall. That was it, hiding in plain sight, disguised by the miracle of their strange, incredibly advanced technology.

Forty feet. Their feet pounded on the pavement and, despite the wind of their passage, her hair was sticking to her face.

Thirty feet. The ship was right there. Just a simple bit of programming set up, and they would be off into space and time together.

Twenty feet. They were going to make it, and go away together in order to make their wedding get to the "church" on time.

Ten feet.

A single body stepped lithely from the shadows, freezing them in their tracks. The Doctor stared in consternation, fury and sorrow and a deep sense of betrayal warring inside him with a feeling of bottomless guilt. He seemed to be seriously contemplating knocking the bloke and his shadow on the ground and pounding at them.

The figure stepped into the light as she froze, everywhere inside herself, even her blood soaring cold and bitter through her veins. She could not stop the fear of getting caught, of losing everything so very close to her goal. She stared at him in wonder and desperation. It couldn't be, it had to be just the darkness. But a few seconds blinking and the shape stayed unwavering.

His voice spoke, strong and strange and compelling. "Stop."

Rose felt her heart sinking into her shoes.

It was Koschei.