Author's Note:

Hi everyone! Super-duper thanks to all the following people for reviewing the last chapter: Loopytoo, GallifreanGirl, MayFairy, xxTeam-Masterxx, Catelly, MG Atwood, iLuvTwiBoyz, Omniac, Seileach (x 2), Riverbleu, Aietradaea, SnowNinja123, Beautiful Rogue, Lost Moon, OhTex and babybluepineapple.

Also, a huge wave for my new reviewer BeckyBoo12221 - I just love new reviewers, so really I hope I get to hear from you again!

Seriously, all your reviews give me such a big buzz - they are the reason I work hard to update this story regularly, just so that I get to hear from you all. So keep 'em coming and I will keep up my end of the deal, LOL.

Also, a big wave for tardisandafirebolt - I really hope you are OK. This is the first chapter in the entire series you haven't reviewed, so I'm a bit concerned to know you are all right. Thinking about you ***hugs***.

So here's Chapter 25 (OMG, are we already at Chapter 25?) Enjoy!

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

- The Nether World -

They were standing on a beach. But it was not a beach any human would recognise. The sand beneath their feet was as black as pitch, perfectly flat and perfectly featureless, stretching into the distance in a magnificent sweep of polished ebony. In stark contrast, the sea which lay alongside the dark shore was an astonishing shade of bright turquoise, rippling like silk, restless with tiny waves that crept up the sand like furtive, searching fingers. Overhead, three huge moons hung in the night sky, bathing the breathtaking alien landscape in golden light.

"What is this place?" Martha gasped. "This isn't Earth, is it? Wow, it's so...intense!"

Tejana swallowed hard. She had been here only once before, but it was a place that was hard to forget.

"It's the planet Ariadne," she said in a hushed voice. "It's located on the very edge of the Universe. About as far from Earth as you can get."

Martha wrinkled her nose. "But...is this a hallucination? Who would ever choose a grim place like this for their most treasured memory?"

Tejana didn't answer. She was already walking over the sand, slowly heading further down the beach towards what appeared to be a rippling curtain of rainbow-coloured light hanging on the horizon. Martha scuttled along behind her, staring at the odd phenomenon, trying to make it out through the haze of the dreamscape as they drew closer and closer.

"It's beautiful," she murmured in awe. "All those colours – like a thousand rainbows woven together. What is it?"

"It's a CVE," Tejana returned curtly. "A Charged Vacuum Emboitment. It's a dimensional gateway between this universe and E-Space."

"E-Space?"

"A smaller, oblique universe that exists alongside this one, located at negative spatio-temporal co-ordinates."

"Thanks," Martha remarked sarcastically. "That just about clears everything up." Then her eyes narrowed. "Look, there's someone there! Right by that CVE thing! It must be whoever's dreaming this."

Again, Tejana remained silent, her gaze fixed on the slender figure lying inert on the jet-black sand ahead of them. She knew exactly who it was, beyond any shadow of a doubt. What she didn't understand was how it could be possible.

As they watched, the woman raised herself painfully to her knees. She had long, dark hair, neatly plaited into an intricate braid down her back. She was wearing a ragged brown tunic over a worn pair of leggings and her feet were bare. As the light of the triple moon shone across her face, clearly revealing her features, Martha drew in a sharp, shocked breath.

"But...but that's you!" she exclaimed incredulously. "You're dreaming this?"

"Not this me," Tejana responded cryptically.

Martha was about to demand some further explanation, when a familiar wheezing, droning sound echoed across the silent beach. Further up the shore, the blurred outlines of a blue police box appeared out of thin air, the light on top flashing rhythmically.

Martha's face lit up in a blaze of joy. "The TARDIS! The Doctor's here!"

Overcome with relief and excitement, she began to run forward, only to feel Tejana's hand close on her arm like a vice, stopping her in her tracks. "Wait! It's not real!" the Time Lady hissed. "It's part of her...my...fantasy. Watch...just watch!"

The double doors to the time machine were flung open, a flood of warm light spilling out from the interior to pool on the obsidian sand. A man stood there, silhouetted in the light. He appeared to be wearing a black leather jacket over a plain green jumper and black trousers. He had closely cropped dark hair and rather large ears. As always in the dreamscape, his face was indistinct.

"Who's that?" Martha asked in a disappointed voice. "That's not the Doctor."

"Not your Doctor, maybe," Tejana sighed. "But still the Doctor. That's what he looked like before he regenerated into the Doctor you've been travelling with."

Seeing the TARDIS arrive, the other Tejana had forced herself to stand, her chin raised in determination, the proud Time Lady within her refusing to greet her father on her knees. For a few tense moments, she and the Doctor stared at each other across the long expanse of beach, both of them motionless, as if Time had ground to a halt. But then the Doctor shouted her name and began to run, desperately, frantically, as if he was afraid that his daughter would disappear again if he didn't reach her immediately. The two who watched couldn't read his expression through the obscuring haze of the dream, but Tejana remembered it - she remembered it so very well – the incredible joy, the unguarded love, the overwhelming thanksgiving that she had been safely returned to him, against all the odds in the Universe. And, tears springing to her eyes, she remembered her own response. Watching it happen all over again before her was like watching a poignant movie of her own memory. The jagged sobs tearing from the other Tejana, the lurching, ungainly run as she staggered into her father's arms, pride at last thrown to the wind. His arms closing almost savagely around her, the two of them holding each other, clinging so tightly; tears raining down the Doctor's face into her hair, both of them unaware of anything else except the miracle that had brought them back together.

"I don't get it," Martha said in confusion. "What's happening? Why are they both so upset?"

Tejana turned and looked at her, remembered pain shadowing her face. "Did the Doctor ever tell you about the Time War, Martha? The Time Lords and the Daleks, fighting an endless War throughout Time and Space?"

"Yes," Martha replied uncertainly. "He didn't tell me much. Just that both races ended up being virtually wiped out. I gathered it was hard for him to talk about."

Tejana nodded distantly. "During the War, there was a huge battle, known as the Battle of the Ramah Phalanx. The weapons that were used created a huge field of temporal instability, ripping a hole between the dimensions, between this Universe and E-Space. My battle TARDIS was destroyed, along with the rest of my team. I fell into the hole and was lost in E-Space. I was trapped there for a long, long time. The Doctor thought I was dead, along with the rest of the Time Lords. But in the end, I managed to create a CVE and I escaped back to this Universe, long after the War was over," She pointed at the glistening curtain of light. "That CVE, on the planet Ariadne. "

"Oh, my God," Martha said softly. "This is a memory of when he found you, isn't it? When you were reunited after the War. But if you're here, talking to me, whose memory is it? Who's that woman with the Doctor?"

"That's where it gets tricky," Tejana answered grimly. "She's me. She's me from an earlier time-line. It's kind of difficult to explain, but our two time-lines are currently linked via the Cardiff Space-Time Rift. I'm guessing when it assimilated me, Legion used the link to travel in time and has absorbed her as well. This is her fantasy."

Martha's eyes widened. "Two of you? From different time-lines, together in the same place?"

"Yeah, trippy, isn't it?" the Time Lady said. "Occupational hazard of the time traveller, I'm afraid." Then, turning away, she added over her shoulder, "I'm going to have to try to snap her...me...out of it. Stay here, Martha. Don't move until I come back."

"Wait!" Martha objected urgently. "I'm no expert on wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff, but isn't it a really bad thing if you meet up with yourself like that? Won't it cause a massive paradox or something?"

Tejana paused and glanced back at her. "Usually, in real time, yes, that's exactly what would happen. I'd probably blow a hole in the space/time continuum the size of Belgium."

"And here? In this place? What will happen here?"

"To be honest, I don't know," Tejana replied, her expression grave. "But I guess we'll soon find out."

- The Hub, March 2013 -

Jack stood in the corridor leading to the Torchwood cells area, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the heavy, steel hatch in the floor. Even as he watched, it began to glow a fiery red.

Retreating backward a few steps, Jack pressed the button on his communicator.

"Doctor? She's broken out of her cell. She's started on the second door. We're running out of time fast."

-The Nether World-

Tejana walked along the beach, feeling the soft black sand shushing beneath her feet, hearing the gentle waves lapping at the shore. It all seemed so real, so substantial and so solid. She had never thought to be here again, this lonely, forgotten outpost on the edge of nowhere, completely unremarkable save for the fact that it was here, battered and bruised, that she had finally escaped from her long imprisonment in E-Space.

She remembered opening her eyes for the first time, like a newly-born babe, staring around at the golden light of the triple moons, so different from the slight greenish tinge that characterised E-Space, and realising with heart-wrenching joy that she had at last come home.

She remembered reaching eagerly for the reassuring comfort of the psychic link, so long denied to her, expecting to find the familiar, harmonious collective of Time Lord minds, expecting to find Gallifrey. But instead there had been nothing, just an echoing, haunted emptiness that had shocked and frightened her to the core. Only one mind had been left, one single solitary consciousness remaining from so many. Drowning in the silence, as terrified as a child left alone in the dark, she had called to it and had felt it answer with both her hearts, recognising the touch she had known all her life, the touch of her father.

And he had come for her, in the TARDIS, crossing the Universe to reach her, until at long last they were together again. She remembered the smell of his leather jacket, the smoothness of it under her cheek, as soft as butter. She remembered the soothing burr of his Northern accent as he spoke in her ear, telling her that everything was going to be all right now. She remembered her tears falling to the black sand, glistening like diamonds, when he told her that they were the only ones left. The Doctor and Tejana, father and daughter, the last of the Time Lords.

So bitter-sweet, that memory, and yet one she had treasured above all others. One that the Tejana from 2008 wanted to stay in forever, holding on to the unprecedented and precious closeness she had felt with her father, before reality had intruded...before Rose had emerged from the TARDIS to stake her claim on the Doctor's time and attention, to once more drive a wedge between them.

The Tejana from 2013 drew in a shaky breath as she stood beside her younger self. She knew she had to try to shatter the illusion, as she had done for all of her human companions, but she didn't quite know where to start. A charge of artron energy would not work on a Time Lord mind – and anyway, she had none left to give. So instead, tentatively, not sure whether mental contact was even possible, she reached into the psychic link and began to call.

"Tejana! Tejana!"

To her relief, the other woman's head jerked up, looking over her ghostly father's shoulder, her eyes directed at the exact spot where her older self was standing.

"Who are you?" she demanded, also using the psychic link to communicate.

"You can see me," the first Tejana said in surprise.

"I can see you, although not very clearly," her other self replied, her tone taut with wariness. "Now I'll ask you again, who are you? And how are you able to access the psychic link? Are you a Time Lord?"

"I am you, from the future. You need to listen to me. You're caught in an illusion. A gestalt being has assimilated you into its hive mind – it's using hallucinations drawn from your own memories to stop you fighting the control it has over your mind."

The younger Tejana frowned."An illusion? But it feels so real. And if you're me, how can you be here?"

"Never mind that, there's no time. You need to understand that this scene on the planet Ariadne happened long ago. It's nothing but a memory. In your time-line, you're currently being held prisoner by the Master on The Valiant, with the Doctor and Jack."

"Jack?" the other woman said, her tone faintly puzzled, as if the name was ringing a distant bell in her mind.

"Yes! Do you remember Jack?" the older Tejana asked urgently. Concentrating on the Master's true name had been the key to dispelling her own visions. Somehow, she needed to get her younger self to do something similar, to find something in her own mind that was outside the realm of the fantasy and could be used as a weapon to shatter it. "Captain Jack Harkness! Do you remember him? Please, you need to concentrate hard. There has to be something you can remember that doesn't fit with the illusion, something from your real life that you can anchor yourself to. You have to MAKE yourself remember, to snap yourself back to reality."

For a moment, the younger Tejana hesitated, as though she was weighing up whether or not to trust the strange warning from such an unlikely source. But then she closed her eyes and her mind begin to focus within the psychic link, sharpening and intensifying.

Something began to shimmer in the air before her. The older Tejana stared at it. Unlike the dream surroundings, it was perfectly clear. It appeared to be a small, golden ball, about the size of a small grape-fruit, beautifully engraved with intricate runes. She knew what it was – she had come across similar spheres several times before. It was a music box, made by the people of the Jaare-Oregim on the planet Lystra. What she didn't understand was what possible significance a child's toy such as this could have to her younger self. Try as she might, she could not think of any reason why she would choose this image to break the illusion.

Nevertheless, whatever the reason, it appeared to be working. As she watched, the ball unfurled, releasing a startling profusion of light, patterning the night sky with colour. Then the enchanting music began, the Song of the Universe pouring out of the golden sphere and swelling through the air, louder and louder and louder. And as the sound grew, resonating in the silence, the hallucination began to crumble. The image of the Doctor shuddered like an ancient piece of film jammed in an old-fashioned projector, before melting away into the ground. The glowing curtain of the CVE tore itself to shreds and vanished, while the TARDIS simply wavered and then disappeared with an odd popping sound. The black sand and the turquoise sea faded away, transforming once more into the fog-shrouded grey swamp. The golden music box stayed for a few seconds longer, gently rotating in mid-air, before it too was gone, dissolving back into the psychic link, the last few notes of beautiful music lingering softly behind it, like an elusive perfume.

The two separate versions of the same Time Lady were left facing each other, all delusion stripped away, their feet mired in the foul, muddy morass, the cold mist drifting and eddying around them.

"You did it," the older Tejana said quietly.

The other woman nodded, looking around her with an expression of distaste. "Yeah, although now I'm not sure that's such a good thing. Not the nicest of places, is it?"

"It kind of grows on you. It's better than the alternative, believe me."

The younger Tejana fixed her blue eyes steadily on those of her older counterpart. "I remember it all now," she said. "Everything about the temporal displacement. You're the Tejana from Earth-time 2013, aren't you? I've been living your life for the last little while. And I have to say, I'm not entirely sure I like what you've done with it."

Hearing the note of criticism in the other woman's voice, the older Tejana felt a bubble of hysterical laughter rising in her throat. She had spent so much time justifying her recent life choices to the Doctor, to Jack, to Martha...but she had never thought she would need to explain it all to herself.

"Hey, trust me, your life isn't exactly peaches and cream either, you know," she retorted. "There's nothing I'd like more than to restore the causal nexus, so that things can go back to the way they should be."

Even as she spoke, a wave of dizziness struck her. With an effort, she just managed to keep herself from falling, a cold sweat breaking out on her forehead.

"Are you all right?" the younger version of herself asked anxiously. "You look sick. And old...so much older than me. I can even see some grey in your hair now."

Tejana could hear the breath rasping in her own throat as she fought back the debilitating nausea. "Yeah, well, it's been a big five years."

"Mmmm, so I've heard," the other shot back sarcastically. "And this place doesn't exactly seem to be helping."

Sudden pain ripped through the older Tejana's belly, causing her to fall to her knees in the mud. "My levels of artron energy are nearly depleted," she gasped. "And there's something else as well...a sort of tearing feeling."

The younger Time Lady crouched beside her. "I know. I feel it too. I think it's cosmic angst. We're breaking the Laws of Time by being together like this...even here, separated from our physical selves in this unnatural place," she said, her voice tight with worry. "We're being diminished, whittled away piece by piece."

"Cosmic angst? I thought that was just one of the Doctor's tall tales," the older Tejana said hoarsely. "That whole thing about chunks of your past detaching themselves like melting ice-bergs?"

"Evidently not. And, in your weakened state, if we don't do something, I'm guessing it's going to kill you - really, really soon."

The older Tejana gave a painful chuckle. "Oh gods, you don't pull any punches, do you? Was I always that blunt?"

"Not much point beating around the bush, is there?" the other woman shrugged. "There's only one thing we can do. You know it as well as I do. We have to merge."

"Are you sure? You're my past. You're the one who will disappear. You'll be absorbed back into my consciousness. You won't exist here any more. And I have no idea what effect that will have in the real world."

"Like I said, we don't have a choice," the younger Tejana said grimly. "If we remain separate, you'll die in here. We'll never defeat Legion and we'll never restore the causal nexus. We have to do this."

Feeling the deadly weakness crawling through her limbs, knowing she was moments from collapsing into the mud with the pain in her belly, the older Tejana had no other option but to acquiesce. Slowly, she raised her hands so that her palms faced her younger counterpart. "Well...it was nice meeting you."

"Same here," the other replied, also lifting her own hands. "Although, I hope you won't take it the wrong way if I say that I hope we never see each other again."

"No, not at all," the older Tejana responded, her mouth twisting wryly.

Then, moments before their palms touched, the younger Tejana pulled back. "Just before we do this, I need to ask you something...I need to hear it – the truth - from you."

"What?"

"This...thing...you have going with the Master...are you happy? Really happy?"

The older Tejana met her counterpart's searching gaze with a smile, her eyes suddenly glistening with heart-felt emotion. "The truth? The truth is, he makes me happier than I've been in my life before."

The younger Tejana nodded slowly, an answering smile reluctantly lighting her own eyes. "Well then, maybe it's something to look forward to after all. Who'd have thought?"

With that, she slammed their palms together and opened the psychic link as wide as it could go. "Goodbye. And good luck."

"Goodbye," whispered the older Tejana, closing her eyes as she felt the rush of energy swirling towards her.

And when she opened them again, she was once more alone.