Notes: Ok, I had to change quite a bit in this one, but I really hope you like it. A lot of thought and planning has gone into this story arc, all the way through to Time of the Doctor. I was going to wait until I had this arc finished before posting any of it, but I can't wait for your responses to it.
Clara closed the book she was reading in the library of her grandparents' TARDIS when her mobile started ringing. There were very few people that had her number, so she knew it would be something important.
"Hello," she chirped in greeting when she saw her parents' name on the display.
"Clara, sweetheart, how are you?" her mother asked.
"Good. The trips lately have been a little less dangerous again, but granddad is teaching me lots about different languages and cultures. How are you two?" she replied.
"Just fine. We need to pick you up for a little trip. Vastra, Jenny, and Strax said it was urgent and we needed to bring you along with us," River informed her.
"Sure, mum. I'll be ready when you get here," Clara replied, a bit worried about what might be wrong with their friends.
She had lived with them for months before meeting her grandparents in the past. It had been a terrifying adventure, leading to her first regeneration, but it also marked the beginning of her travels through time and space properly, ending the boring years she spent stuck on Earth.
Her grandparents were nowhere to be found when she felt the arrival of the other TARDIS, so she left them a note on the console before joining her parents. Jamie and River quickly embraced their daughter as soon as she got through the doors. They missed having her around terribly, but knew that was something all parents went through as their children got older. Their own parents had gone through even worse with them. James had insisted on leaving the TARDIS shortly after looking into the vortex and River's parents had unknowingly grown up with their daughter as their best friend, missing her infancy entirely.
"Are they in trouble?" Clara questioned.
"Not sure. They just said there was an important message and we needed to hear it in person to avoid anyone overhearing," James answered, flicking the necessary controls that would take them to the home of their Victorian friends.
"So glad you could make it," Vastra greeted the young family.
"Vastra, Jenny, Strax. It's so good to see you," Clara squealed, hugging each of them tightly. Strax sneered slightly at the show of affection, but tolerated it.
"I've tea set up in the sitting room," Jenny told them and everyone moved to sit together.
"Professor, Jamie. Help yourself to some tea," Vastra invited. "Perhaps we should get down to the business at hand."
"That might be good, dear, yes," Jenny agreed once everyone had their tea.
"Clarence DeMarco. Murderer, under sentence of death. He offered us this in exchange for his life," Vastra explained and showed them a scribbled note from the prisoner.
"Space time coordinates," River realized and showed them to her husband.
"This, Mister DeMarco claims, is the location of the Doctor's greatest secret," Vastra told them.
"What secret? There aren't many things he would keep from me and I'm certainly not familiar with wherever this is," James responded.
"We don't know," Jenny admitted.
"So what else did this DeMarco tell you? He didn't just buy his life with some coordinates. How did he prove their value?" River questioned.
"One word, only. A word I've heard in connection with the Doctor before. Trenzalore," Vastra answered.
"I've never heard-" James began, but River interrupted him, obviously having come across this name in her studies.
"How exactly did he describe what he was giving you?" she demanded.
"The Doctor has a secret, you know. He has one he will take to the grave. And it is discovered," Vastra quoted the man exactly.
"You misunderstood," River told them and James could feel her panic through their bond.
"What is it, mum? What misunderstanding?" Clara asked, worried by her mother's sudden fear.
"Oh my god, it can't be," James gasped as he realized what his wife meant.
There was no more time for explanations however, as several fearsome looking creatures smashed through the windows and doors to surround them.
"Tell the Doctor. Tell the Doctor. Tell the Doctor," the beings whispered loudly through sharp-toothed mouths on otherwise blank faces.
"What would you have us tell him?" James asked, gathering River and Clara behind him as he faced this threat.
The face of one of the creatures morphed into that of the deceased Dr. Simeon and he announced ominously, "His family is lost for ever more, unless he goes to Trenzalore."
The Doctor and Rose reentered their TARDIS with several bags of fish and chips. They were laughing happily as the Doctor told his wife a story from his travels with Sarah Jane.
"Clara! We got some supper for you, dear," Rose called out.
"She left us a note," the Doctor told her as he pulled the yellow sticky note off of the console. "Seems Jamie and River picked her up for a little trip somewhere. Which means, you and I have the ship to ourselves, my love."
The Doctor growled playfully as he pulled Rose into a fierce kiss, but they were interrupted by a knocking on the door. He looked at the door curiously before moving to open it. Rose shrieked in surprise as a hypercube flew through the door, straight for her. It stopped in midair right in front of her and hovered for a moment as the Doctor rushed to her side. It was only a moment before the message played.
"Mum, dad, this isn't going to be good. River, Clara and I were visiting Vastra, Jenny and Strax when we were all taken by the Great Intelligence. He demands that you go to Trenzalore or he will kill all of us. The coordinates are programmed in the hypercube. Not sure if you are aware of what is located there, but River discovered it in her studies. It's the one place you told me that a time traveller can't ever go," Jamie's voice echoed through the console room, clearly distraught.
"Oh my god. Doctor, what is it? We have to help them," Rose cried.
"Trenzalore. I've heard the name, of course. Always suspected what it was, never wanted to find out myself. River would know, though. I told Jamie when he started travelling on his own, when you are a time traveller, there is one place you must never go. Your own grave. Trenzalore is where I'm buried," he explained.
"Ok, beyond the knowledge of your own future type thing, why is it so dangerous?" Rose wondered.
"As creatures of time, and that includes you now as well, what we leave behind in the universe isn't just a physical body. Our connections to the TARDIS and travels through the vortex leave a sort of scar on the universe. Coming into contact with that would be catastrophic. Even someone else touching it would cause terrible harm. It would scatter them through my entire time stream and destroy them completely," the Doctor told her as he accessed the cube for the coordinates and started setting course.
"We'll have to be very careful then, obviously, but we have to save them," Rose insisted.
"Of course we will. That's what we do, but I need you to understand just how dangerous this is. We cannot allow anyone to come into contact with that scar. I can only presume that yours would be there as well. At least I hope so," he agreed. He never wanted them to be parted, the severing of their bond would be excruciating. While he wouldn't hope for her death, it would be the most merciful for them to die together.
The TARDIS engines started and Rose helped her husband pilot the ship to the coordinates they were given. It wasn't long before the ship started to fight them on the destination, however.
"Why is the TARDIS so upset about this?" Rose asked.
"She's just figured out where we're going. She's against it. I'm about to cross my own timeline in the biggest way possible. The Tardis doesn't like it. She's fighting it. Hang on! Hang on!" he shouted as he moved to her side and wrapped an arm protectively around her shoulders. They were both thrown into the railing and while they were often tossed to the floor by the TARDIS when they started travelling together, flights had been significantly smoother in recent years.
"We're still in space, orbiting the planet," Rose told him as she looked at the monitor.
"She doesn't want to land. She's shut down," he told her as he walked to the doors and opened them to take a look at the planet below. "Okay, so that's where I end up."
"Cheery," Rose commented, looking over his shoulder to the dark, volcanic world beneath them.
"Always thought maybe I'd retire. Take up watercolours or bee-keeping, or something. Apparently not," the Doctor commented.
"We'd be bored within a day. Doesn't us even knowing about this change things though?" Rose wondered.
"Possibly. Time is constantly being rewritten," the Doctor replied.
"So, how are we going to get the Old Girl down there, then?" Rose asked.
"We're going to fall. She's turned off practically everything, except the anti-gravs. Guess what I'm turning off?" he answered.
Rose shut the doors and held tightly to the railing as he used his sonic on the controls and the ship began hurtling toward the planet. They both started screaming but only felt a slight bump when the TARDIS actually hit the ground. It was significantly harder for the Old Girl as one of the window panes in the door cracked. That had never happened before, despite having fallen into the heart of a planet circling a black hole in the past.
"Oops," the Doctor said as he silently promised his ship that he would fix that as soon as possible.
There was lightning streaking across the sky and everything around them was dark and ominous. Hundreds of tombstones covered the landscape around them.
"Should we be worried about zombies or something? This is straight out of a horror movie," Rose commented, taking his arm.
They walked for a while before noticing a huge version of their TARDIS looming on the horizon.
"It's a hell of a monument," Rose breathed.
"It's the TARDIS," he corrected.
"What, you mean it's actually Her?" Rose questioned.
"When a TARDIS is dying, sometimes the dimension dams start breaking down. They used to call it a size leak. All the bigger on the inside starts leaking to the outside. It grows. When I say that's the TARDIS, I don't mean it looks like the TARDIS, I mean it actually is the TARDIS. Our TARDIS from the future. What else would they bury me in?" he explained sullenly.
"I hope you're right," Rose said, breaking the silence of their rather morbid walk.
"About?"
"About my grave being here too. I don't want you to be here alone. And I don't want to keep going when you're gone. I don't know how you ever managed so many centuries alone. I mean I know you had friends sometimes, but Doctor, I could never stand even the few centuries I've lived if I didn't have you with me," she told him.
They stopped for a moment and just hugged each other in support. Thinking about the death of either of them was terribly upsetting.
Their moment was shattered by the eerie sound of whispering all around them. The couple looked up to see that they were surrounded by men in dark suits and top hats, but their faces were white and blank except for their frighteningly gruesome mouth. Rose held the Doctor a little more tightly for a moment as they tried to figure out what to do.
"This man must fall as all men must. The fate of all is always dust," they chanted together and while it sounded like they were whispering, their voices were clear and loud enough to be heard even from a distance.
"Ok, should we be running from them or is facing them the best way to get to Jamie and the others?" Rose asked silently.
"My first instinct was to run, but you're right that they'll probably take us straight to the others if we go with them peacefully," he agreed.
"The man who lies will lie no more when this man lies at Trenzalore," the men continued their chant.
"Enough of that, thanks. Take us to your leader," the Doctor demanded.
*********************************
James, River, and Clara huddled together as their little group faced the impossibly alive Doctor Simeon. Of course, it wasn't really the man who had died in Victorian London after trying to take over the world with snowmen. It was the Great Intelligence using his image to take corporeal form. As they waited for the Doctor and Rose to arrive, he decided to taunt them with a few details about the demise of their beloved Doctor.
"It was a minor skirmish, by the Doctor's blood-soaked standards. Not exactly the Time War, but enough to finish him. In the end, it was too much for the old man and his pet," he told them.
"Blood-soaked?" Jenny questioned.
"The Doctor has been many things, but never blood-soaked," Vastra denied.
"Tell that to the leader of the Sycorax, or Solomon the trader, or the Cybermen, or the Daleks. The Doctor lives his life in darker hues, day upon day, and he will have other names before the end. The Storm, the Beast, the Valeyard," the Great Intelligence argued.
"If you ever dare to call my mother anything less than the incredible goddess that she is again, you will truly discover what it means to be blood-soaked, and not just from my father, but from me as well," James growled at the being that dared to call Rose Tyler the Doctor's pet.
"Ah, yes. The Doctor's mongrel family. You know, if the Time Lords were still alive, they would be disgusted by your very existence. If they didn't kill all of you outright, they would likely put all three of you on a dissection table to examine the travesty of your genomes," the Great Intelligence countered.
"Even if any of this were true, which I take the liberty of doubting, how did you come by this information?" Vastra interrupted, stepping between Simeon and James' family.
"I am information," he told her.
"You were a mind without a body last time we met," Jenny argued.
"And you were supposed to stay that way," Vastra added.
"Alas, I did," he replied and proceeded to pull his face off of the body he inhabited. The clothing crumpled to the ground and one of the nearby faceless creatures, suddenly stepped forward and took on his appearance again. "As you can see."
It was a matter of a few more minutes before the Doctor and Rose were escorted there by the faceless men. Their arrival signalled the Great Intelligence to begin to outline his plan for them all. They were standing outside of the enormous TARDIS, the doors before them apparently sealed.
"The doors require a key. The key is a word. And the word is the Doctor's," Simeon told them.
"Here I am, late to my own funeral. Glad everyone could make it," the Doctor announced.
"Open the door, Doctor. Speak, and open your tomb," the Great Intelligence insisted.
"No."
"Because you know what's in there?" Simeon asked.
"I will not open those doors," the Doctor insisted.
"The key is a word lost to time. A secret hidden in the deepest shadow and known to the two of you alone. The answer to a question," the Great Intelligence continued.
"I will not open my tomb."
"Doctor, what is your name?" he asked, but was met only by the glares of the Doctor and his wife. "The Doctor's friends. Stop their hearts."
The creatures surrounding them stepped toward Vastra, Strax, and Jenny, hissing threateningly.
"Madam, boy, combat formation. They are unarmed," Strax instructed.
"So are we!" Jenny argued, ignoring his usual confusion over the fact that she was a girl.
"Do not divulge our military secrets," Strax warned.
"Stop this! Leave them alone," Rose shouted.
"Your name, Doctor. Answer me," the Great Intelligence insisted, refusing to call off the attack.
"I can't!" he responded desperately.
"You don't understand how it works. He physically can't!" James added.
The creatures seemed to be barely corporeal. Despite physical attacks from their victims, they simply reformed and continued their assault, reaching straight into their chests to grasp their hearts.
"My name is not something that I can say to anyone but my wife. It's a fact and I can't change that, no matter what threats you put towards me, my friends, or my family," the Doctor told him.
"Take the others as well," Simeon ordered his minions.
With another hiss, they stepped toward James, River, and Clara.
"No!" Rose bellowed, the light of the Wolf shining in her eyes for a moment before the doors behind them opened with a creak.
