A/N: And we are at the end, my readers. This has been an absolute blast to write and while I'm not terribly thrilled about how some of it turned out, it's been fun and I hope you've enjoyed the ride. You've all been lovely and I'll see, maybe over the winter hols, about cobbling together a companion piece from all the parts I didn't post. There's actually an entire possible story within this chapter itself – you'll see what I mean. I've sort of set the stage for another piece I might write in the future. I have quite a few chunks written. Basically, how they went from the end of Chapter 28 to here.

Also, this chapter has a soundtrack chosen from Doctor Who music. Each section (there are four) has a song, and you can find these on Youtube, all of them in the mix I've directed you to below. If you go to the description of the mix, the times you can find each song are in the description as shortcuts so you can skip to them, though I've also noted them here. The first three songs I've chosen are in the same order as the mix, so you can just listen to those three for the first two parts.

Part 1: A Dazzling End (51:55)br /

Part 2: A Song of Captivity and Freedom and Song of Freedom (Start at 53:21 for both)br /

Part 3: The Dream of a Normal Death (10:31)br /

Part 4: The Greatest Story Never Told (21:42) The Long Song (1:17:18) This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home (32:05)

It's not possible to post links on FFN, but if you go to Youtube and search for the video titled Doctor Who: Epic Soundtrack Music Mix for 50th Anniversary (Murray Gold) then you will find the one I am suggesting.

Also, regarding the comment re: the Doctor being loomed for the house of Lungbarrow... the thing is that there's plenty in the TV series (classic and new) which would contradict significant elements of Lungbarrow, so I choose not to take it as canon. Not to mention there's that whole bit about Eight telling us all he's half human, which it looks like Moffat may be revisiting... So the DW canon has plenty of internal inconsistencies, which I think allows fanfic writers some flexibility, aye?


We Are Gathered for the End


Panting, Rose stumbled through the doors of the TARDIS, slamming them behind her with as much force as she could muster.

"Honestly," she hissed between laboured breaths. "How could you take us to the wrong era of the same planet again? I almost got trampled. Again!"

"That was the right time!" grumbled the Doctor, checking the monitor. "Something in the timeline must have changed; there should've been cocoa trees everywhere."

Rose, mourning the chocolate she'd still not had a chance to sample, wandered over to the Doctor's side of the console and peered at the monitor. She still could make out only a little of the Gallifreyan on sight, but noticed that there was a clear disruption in the timeline about ninety years previous, if her assessment was anything to go by.

"He didn't…" she muttered.

The Doctor's eyebrows shot up. "He did, he must've." He reached over and tapped part of the console screen – he'd finally upgraded to touchscreens. The TARDIS' inbuilt phone rang a few times and a moment later, Tony's face, framed by the coral of his own TARDIS control room, flickered into view on the screen.

Unmistakeable blue eyes looked out from the face of a young-looking man. His close-cropped blonde hair and short beard were far scruffier than Rose liked and she raised an eyebrow at his appearance.

"Yeah, Dad?" he asked, meeting the Doctor's eyes. It'd taken him the better part of twenty years, but Tony Tyler – known to most of the universe as the Keeper - had gradually shifted into the use of the term. The Doctor had been his father longer than Pete Tyler had, though the later would always hold a special place in the man's hearts.

"Your mother and I have noticed some issues with A'ni'darea Four's cocoa groves…" the Doctor's tone was enquiring, but not accusing.

Tony ran a hand over the back of his neck, a gesture he'd unconsciously adopted from his father. "Well, Maris had a craving for this fruit that grew there and you know how pregnant women are…"

"You screwed up a century of the planet's history. For a craving." Rose ground out between clenched teeth. "Didn't your father teach you better than that?"

Tony snorted. "No, that's exactly what he taught me. Go off course, help out a bit…"

"Fair point," the Doctor conceded. "But you should've put it to rights afterwards."

"I did. Not my fault the timeline never should have included cocoa plantations to begin with. That's your fault."

The Doctor's expression was so affronted Rose had to refrain from laughing. "Now don't you start –"

"Jack get down!" Tony yelled behind him. "That's not for climbing!"

"Jack's there?" Rose asked, amused. The child was a delight, but a frustrating one.

Tony nodded, hefting the small boy up onto his hip. "Maris is at the Academy ahead of the ceremony tomorrow and asked me to watch him. The sixth form will be singing this year."

"They'll be singing again?" the Doctor seemed a bit queasy and Rose shoved him playfully.

Rose smiled to herself, glad for the reminder they were due home soon. They rang off from Tony with a promise that they'd be back in time for the ceremony the next day and repaired to the galley, Rose preparing tea for them.

"I'm so glad I met you," the Doctor grinned up at her from the table as she set a plate of chocolate digestives beside the teapot.

"You corrupted my youth," Rose said with a teasing smile. "But I'm still glad of it too."

He chuckled darkly before sitting back, stretching his long legs ahead of him, chocolate biscuit in his hand. "The ceremony tomorrow should be exciting. It's our biggest transit yet."

Rose nodded, taking a sip of her tea before she responded. "Yeah. With the three new gates at Arcadia, it'll be nearly a hundred million this time."

The Doctor smiled widely. "A hundred million. Never gets old, watching them come through. Remember that first time, when we had just that five hundred? Oh but that was a good day."

She couldn't help but smile broadly at the memory. It had been many years since the Doctor's work had finally come to fruition, but still it shone as brightly in her mind as the day had in life. One of the grandest days of their lives.


On the shores of the Coral Sea, wind whipping about them as a rare storm brewed on the far horizon, the Doctor paced.

He would, if anyone pointed out that he was pacing, vehemently deny it, but his wife knew him well enough that no amount of denial would convince her.

"Oh sit down already and have something to eat. We still have a while yet."

Tony sat across from her at the table they'd brought out from the TARDIS, having chosen to eat on the beach this particular day. Tall and broad-shouldered, his blue eyes danced with amusement.

"Yeah, Dad. We've already been through and back. It's going to work so calm down already," Tony said before taking a sip of tea.

"Come on, let's go sit down, you're giving me a headache," Penelope, better known as Penny, spoke from where she was monitoring some of the controls. Tall, willowy, and far too ginger for her own good, their daughter crossed her arms over her chest, raising her eyebrows in an unspoken order at the pacing man as she walked towards the table.

The anxious Time Lord dropped onto one of the chairs, but one knee bounced with nervous energy. He broke a scone in two and spread some clotted cream onto it before adding a generous spoonful of jam. Rose rolled her eyes fondly at the sight. Over a thousand years old and still had the sweet tooth of a child.

Before they'd had a chance to finish their tea, Rose could feel the electric jolt of the Schism sparking to life. Penny rushed over to the controls while the Doctor and Tony used their sonic screwdrivers to take readings at the mouth of the enormous coral arch.

Rose packed the table away into their TARDIS and went to join her daughter at the controls.

Inspired by the Hipocci hospital gate that had once nearly destroyed the Earth, the Doctor had developed a hypothesis. It had taken him decades of tinkering every time they went home to spend time on Gallifrey before they had managed to refine the settings enough to break through, but here they were, at the moment of truth.

The swirling, spiralling, violet vortex fused with the coral archway, like a film of soapy residue stretched across a bubble wand. Its violent dance of energy discharge and the intense drumbeat of all creation quieted as the swirling mass calmed to a peaceful blue, stretched carefully across the archway.

"This is it," said the Doctor, clapping his hands together in front of his mouth in anticipation.

Rose, Penny, and Tony moved to stand at his side.

Behind the bright blue wall of gently swirling plasma, shadows became visible. Slowly, a single shape was joined by others. The formless grey smudges came closer and grew clearer; finally revealed as the outlines of people. The first to reach the archway appeared to hesitate. It bent down suddenly, just as a small child ran through the wall of blue light.

The dark-skinned child in tattered grey robes froze as soon as she was through and blinked up at the sky. A wide smile broke her face in two.

Rose watched, wide eyed, as a woman burst through behind her, taking the toddler up in her arms. The woman, who appeared to be the child's mother, looked around warily, her head snapping this way and that as she took in the sea to the west and the plains to the east. Her hand flew to cover her mouth as tears leapt to her eyes.

People were materializing around the pair quickly. A dozen now, all of them wide-eyed and silent as they stepped through the gate and took a few tentative steps down the beach to make room for more to follow behind.

The Doctor stood tall and spoke, his voice carrying easily over the growing crowd. "You are all safe now. The war can't follow you here. Welcome home, children of Gallifrey."


"We'd best get to bed; we're going to be expected in those ridiculous robes tomorrow and even I need to be well-rested for that." He stood and extended a hand to Rose.

Many years had passed since their reunion and still he took every chance to reach for her. When she had finally made her way through the universes to find him, Rose had not known how long she would have with the Doctor before age claimed her or disaster took one of them, but she had resolved to spend every moment of the time they would have by his side. He had, likewise, agreed that whatever time he could have with Rose was better than not having it, and so they had set off on a grand adventure, sure that they would have, at best, a few decades to savour. Each knew that the joy they would have together would forever outweigh the pain of their eventual separation.

Tony was twenty-five before any of them addressed the increasingly undeniable fact that Rose looked no different than she had when they had first towed Gallifrey through the Schism. The Doctor had spent months figuring out what had happened and was only able to come up with a single hypothesis; that whatever it was about her that allowed Rose to absorb the Time Vortex all those years ago without being destroyed had also allowed her biology to be influenced by it.

She had some Time Lord-like traits; a greater tolerance for condensed time energy and an improved ability to heal. The Doctor never did quite pinpoint exactly how her biology had been altered as she remained purely human at a genetic level, though he made a note of the fact that her telomeres didn't shorten as they should. He'd puzzled at his inability to estimate her lifespan until Rose had shut him up quite soundly by telling him that they had no idea what his was either, with no regenerations left and a knack for finding trouble.

By the time she reached her hundredth year, still as youthful as she had been at twenty, Rose simply decided to be grateful for it and to continue enjoying what time she had with the Doctor.

Her two hundredth birthday had rolled around a few years past, as best she could figure, and still she did not age. She supposed it must be the ongoing continuous exposure to the Time Vortex, but she rarely thought on it for long, choosing instead simply to enjoy the days she had and not worry about the ones she wouldn't.

While her sleep cycle had shifted over the centuries and Rose was able to regularly go for a full Gallifreyan day – sixty hours – without rest, she still needed more sleep than her family of Time Lords. The Doctor would kip for only a few hours, while Rose would sleep for at least ten. But still, the Doctor would retire to bed with her and they would go through their nightly routine together in the manner of long-married couples.

"It'll be a wonderful day tomorrow," Rose said as she pulled the duvet up to her chest. "This will be the last from Arcadia, won't it?"

"Arcadia and her provinces, yes," the Doctor said with a smile. When the Gate had finally flickered to life the very first time, nearly a century ago now, the Doctor and his family had gone through and met with the Time Lord Council. They had agreed on an order to the evacuation, with the hardest hit parts of the planet to be rescued first. The Scarlet Plains and the Minor Cities would be next and then the southern provinces and great lands to the north would follow.

Satisfied that they had a lovely day ahead, Rose snuggled into her husband's arms and drifted off to sleep.


Rose was very glad that by unanimous agreement of the Founders, the ceremonial robes on this Gallifrey did not require those ridiculous headdresses. In the early days of the construction of this new world, when as many left as stayed, the people who had emerged from the refugees had met and decided on a number of things.

The first groups through the arch had been largely progressive sorts; the few who didn't look on the Doctor with scorn and were willing to follow him through the Gate. These were the people who laid the foundations of the new Gallifreyan society and Rose was incredibly proud of the world they had built.

Those who arrived through the gates were given a choice; stay and abide by the social order that had been established, leave for other planets, or go back through the arch.

Almost all chose to stay, though a few hardliners had made their way to other worlds. Rose remembered the two decades they'd been wrapped up in a lawsuit brought against the new Gallifrey via the Shadow Proclamation by some Time Lords who were rather disgruntled at the way of things.

She adjusted the golden silk sash she had been cajoled into wearing at these gatherings for the last fifteen years around her shoulders. She still felt incredibly foreign in the Gallifreyan ceremonial garb, but over the last century, the Homecoming, as it had come to be called, had become a semi-annual festival of sorts as the newest refugees from the war were welcomed, clothed, fed, and celebrated. She, her husband and their family were guests of honour, of a sort, long though they had all tried to avoid the spotlight.

Tony, the Keeper of the Gate as he was known almost universally among Gallifreyans, stood to the side of the grand coral gate, now one of many that dotted the planet at areas of significant temporal energy. An ornate podium had been erected there. He looked resplendent in his deep red robes. His golden hair shone in the sunslight and his square cut beard made him look like some king of old, Rose often thought. Here, he was an Arthur, or if not him, then Merlin. The man at the magic gate that brought safety to millions.

Thousands upon thousands of robed people stood gathered on the beach, a seething mass of faces; of children perched on shoulders, of friends welcoming neighbours, joyous greetings and reintroductions. Faces from other worlds dotted the crowd, here to share in the festivities.

"My friends," the Keeper intoned, his deep voice booming above the din of chatter and the wash of waves, subtly amplified by recording technology hidden in the podium which would, on this day, project his voice and image to all gates across the planet. "My friends, welcome to our one hundredth anniversary of the Homecoming."

The assembled people cheered. An exultant wave of joyous chorus rippled through the throng. Down the beach, as far as the eye could see, stretching into the coral forest and along the grassy plains, Gallifreyans young and old raised their voices in raucous happiness.

"For one hundred years," the blonde man continued, "at the peak activity of each sun, my family has welcomed Gallifrey's children home from the war." The cheering began again and Tony held up his hands to quiet them. "We have been privileged to see this world begin anew, free of war, free of servitude, and free of the conceits that once nearly condemned existence to end." The crowd fell silent.

Every child of Gallifrey knew the story of the Final Sanction; the hubris of the decision of the Time Lord Council of old to destroy all creation to elevate the Time Lords into pure consciousness. The tots learned of it in school so that the shame of it would never be repeated.

On the other side of the Gate, it was still the last day of the Last Great Time War; the Time Lock remained in effect. The people were still battled-scarred and afraid, and ignorant of what their rulers had planned to do.

As soon as they were ushered through the Gate and into this mirror of their home world, they were taught about what had happened. Proud though the Time Lords might be, the common people of Gallifrey who largely viewed themselves as stewards of time almost universally reviled the concept of the Final Sanction. The story of the War Council was often used as a cautionary tale of the corrupting influence of power.

"Here, we are free. The Parliament of Founders," Tony inclined his head to the large group of Time Lords to the east of him, "and my family welcome you all to this grand celebration of a short century's labour, and we look unflinchingly onward to the work to come, that we might see the safe homecoming of all of Gallifrey's people.

"I, the Keeper of the Gate, welcome my revered parents, the Great Mother and the Doctor, and my honoured sister, the Scholar, to join us in our celebration."

Loud cheers erupted from the crowd as Rose and the Doctor stepped out of the shadows and up onto the dais. Penelope Tyler, the Scholar, followed behind with her husband, none other than the Immortal Man himself.

The ginger Time Lady hugged her brother warmly and took her place behind the podium. "Over two hundred years ago, the last Lord of Mount Perdition first managed to breach the Time Lock that had protected all creation from the last of the Time War," Penny's gentle voice carried over the quieting crowd, retelling the traditional story of which she was custodian. "Driven mad by the War Council as a child that they might use him for their own purposes, the mad Lord nonetheless unknowingly laid the groundwork of the first Gate of Peace. A dozen worlds came together, offering technology and expertise to their friend the Doctor that he might help save his people from the fires of war.

"We owe a debt of gratitude to the peoples who helped us in our time of need. We owe them the peace we now experience, and we take on our mantles as peacekeepers freely and without reservation and we declare to all creation never again!"

As one, the crowd repeated the cry. Never again; the promise of the people of Gallifrey to the universe that had saved them, even in the face of all the Time War had destroyed. Never again would the Time Lords wage war. Never again would they sacrifice other peoples to save their own. It was the founding principle of modern Gallifrey, at the insistence of the Doctor but with unanimous agreement of the war-ravaged Founders who had laid down the principle document on which all Time Lord law was now based.

The Doctor had tried very hard to get them to agree to call it the Prime Directive, but they'd chosen instead to call the document the Codex, and so it had remained.

The Doctor put a hand on Penny's shoulder and she stood aside to let him speak.

"Two centuries ago, I placed you, my people, in a Time Lock to save creation." The Doctor spoke with a formality and his solemn voice held a gravity Rose only ever heard at the Homecoming. "It is my honour to now be able to put to right that heinous choice."

He turned to the gate, which had reached its solid blue, open state, and spread his arms wide, his eyes shining in the bright light of the suns. "Today and for many years to come, we will continued to liberate our people from the storm of war, and we will welcome them to freedom and to peace. We, the people of Gallifrey, welcome our brothers and sisters home to this great world."

The crowd erupted in cheers at this end to what had become a traditional saying from the Doctor at the Homecoming.

Rose stood beside her husband, her arm looped through his. As they had that day so long ago, the shadows from far behind the gate solidified and grew closer, but this day it was a solid wave of people who arrived.

Word had spread quickly on the other side. While it was only twice annually that Gallifrey's gates could open, on the other side of the Time Lock, not even a day had passed. The words of freedom, peace, and home, had burned through the people of the war-torn Gallifrey like a wildfire. Mother to son to father to daughter to neighbour and onward, the people had come to the gates and crowds now stood on the other side. Tens of thousands would pass through each of the dozens of coral arches each time they opened.

A billion lives had been saved from the war in the century since they had begun, and over a fifty million children had been born free on the new Gallifrey, never knowing the pain of war. Nearly four billion remained to transit across the gates, and it would be the work of centuries to save them all, but they now had more than hope; they had certainty. They would be safe. They would come home.

Rose Tyler turned to look at the beaming face of her son who held the hand of his wife Edira, the beautiful, tall, dark-skinned Time Lady who had been the very first to cross the gate, and she looked to her daughter who was grinning at her dark-haired husband. Her eyes darted to the front of the assembled crowd where her heavily pregnant granddaughter, Maris, held her squirming son Jack, named for his own grandfather. She flashed a smile and a small wave at the exasperated young mother who smiled back at her.

The Great Mother of Gallifrey, as she had been Named by the people for her role in finding their home, turned at last to her husband. Her eyes danced with merriment as she took in the wonder that always crossed his face as he saw his people, tattered and stained, smudged with the grime of war and haunted by the things they had seen, step into the sunlight on that pristine beach and be struck with awe at the realization that they were finally safe.

Their eyes would look to the skies, free now of enemies seeking their destruction. The sun shone brightly and the people rejoiced, singing songs of freedom and welcome as the newest group of refugees was ushered down the beach, into the waiting arms of their own people who had found healing in this new world of theirs.

Rose stood on her toes and kissed the tall, lean man's cheek. She saw the tears of joy in his eyes as thousands passed before them and as always chose not to comment.

It had taken him centuries, but the Doctor had finally managed to save his people and he'd made it home, the long way 'round.

Fin.