AN: MY HORRIBLE BAD! I left our a chapter and didn't even realize I did it! I have been busy powering through giant textbooks of doom and it slipped. I am so sorry. I was wondering why the chapter count was off. So two for the price of one.

Her screams echoed in his ears even as he fell to his knees by the spot where she had disappeared.

It had taken less than the space of a breath for it to happen. He had found Rose Tyler, alive and whole, if only just. He had been far too relieved to stop her as she broke and run, despite Jack's warning. She had only been following her instinct, the same one that had followed since she had met him, that urge to run and take his hand. And in doing so she had become a target. He had watched in horror as the stream of energy sped towards her, his hearts stopping within him as she disappeared in a flash of blinding light.

When it disappeared, all that was left of her was a pile of fine, white ash. As if she hadn't existed.

He didn't register Jack's screams, the flash of his weapon, the threat of death spewing from him. He didn't even notice Lynda hovering nearby. He simply reached for the pile of fine, white granules, silken and soft beneath his fingers. A stiff wind could blow them away, scattering Rose Tyler forever, as if she had never existed. As if she had never mattered.

Rough hands pulled at him, even as Jack continued to shout threats, but the Doctor didn't care. He thought he heard someone mention something about arrest, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered at the moment. Rose Tyler was gone from the universe. And thus the universe itself just didn't seem that important.

There was shoving and commands. Jack was finally apprehended, at least he had stopped shouting and waving his gun. Even quiet, meek Lynda followed, through the corridors and to the lift, where voices rumbled into communication devices. He had no idea what they even said. What did it matter what they did? He had failed, a big failure he was. He had promised to keep Rose safe. He had promised Mickey the Idiot, he had promised Jackie, hell, he had promised Pete. Pete Tyler, long dead and gone, he had promised to keep his little girl safe, to get her home to her mother. And now he couldn't take her home to Jackie, not even a body. A woman who lost her husband and now her only child, and she would likely never know it, because he was captured and he'd let her daughter die.

I wouldn't have missed it for the world…

He felt their weapons in his back as he was pushed off the lift, towards a holding area where guards watched all three of them with stony faces. Lynda stared at it all, wide, doe eyes in her pixie face, glancing back in fear and worry at the Doctor. He shouldn't have brought her here, not her too, another death to have on his hands. Another innocent to fall because of him.

Innocent blood, so much innocent blood. Gallifrey falling over and over again. The screams and cries of millions as The Moment awoke and burned, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Time Lord and Dalek alike, all caught in the fire, as time locked them all into the living hell that he had created. Their agony reverberated in his soul as now Rose Tyler's voice mingled with theirs, a symphony of destruction, all at his hand. Mickey had been right. He was indeed the Oncoming Storm, and death followed in his wake.

Pictures were taken, something akin to rights were read, at least he supposed they were. He barely listened. Rose's final moments replayed again and again in his mind. The Bad Wolf Corporation, that was who ran this place, who killed the likes of Rose Tyler for sport. The Bad Wolf. The entity that had dogged him from the moment he took that girl's hand in the Powell Estates. Had that been it's plan this entire time? Had it been following Rose through all of time and space, waiting for that moment when he would come to care for her the most, to come to need her the most, only to rip her away from him, to destroy her? Had this been what this was all about. Some cosmic entity out to destroy the last vestiges of a soul that he had? Perhaps it was punishment for what he did? Perhaps it was revenge for Gallifrey? But if so, why Rose? Why a girl an innocent and brilliant as her? Why snuff her life out of existence instead of his? Why take her away?

So many innocents, so casually stolen. No more Lyndas no more Roses. No more would he allow this. Not from the Bad Wolf or anyone else. He was, after all, the Oncoming Storm. And his anger roared within him, like distant thunder.

He turned to meet Jack's gaze, sapphire fire, cold and furious. Jack, the man of action, the warrior, knew without words what it was that must be done. He could see him calculate and gauge, eyes flickering between the guards and their weapons.

"Let's do it," the Doctor intoned. And in one swift move Jack was up, with the Doctor behind, grabbing the guards' weapons, knocking them out and locking them in. Lynda, wide eyed, stood beside them, fear in her gazes as she looked up at the Doctor's cold, hard expression.

"Where are the people who control this place," Jack barked at her, his fury barely in check, as if Lynda herself were responsible for this.

"I don't know," she stuttered, her hands twisting at she stared up at the other's man's wrath. "No one knows. No one ever sees them."

"I know where they are," the Doctor growled, more at Jack than at the petrified Lynda. "Same place as last time."

He moved decisively to the lift, weapon in front of him like the soldier he once had been not long ago.

"Where," Jack called.

"Level 500," he muttered as the lift doors opened to him. "The place where the walls are covered in gold."

"How do you know," Jack asked, Lynda close behind as they entered the lift.

"Because he was here before," Lynda supplied gravely, glancing back to the Doctor. "Back when it was Satellite Five."

"Yeah, and I stopped it back then, when the Jagrafess held it," he replied, words sharp as glass as the lift shot straight for the top. "I never meant for this to happen."

He had done what he always did. He had come, saved the day, and fled, despite Cathica's insistence that she couldn't fix what remained. He had been so focused on Adam and his betrayal that he had ignored Cathica's truth. His damn insistence on never staying, on always running, of never facing the consequences of his own actions, it had cost the Earth. It had cost him. And it had cost Rose...his Rose, who he would never be able to bring back.

"No one is blaming you, Doctor," Jack rumbled by his side. Clearly, for his companion, the Doctor wasn't to blame.

"No?" The Doctor turned to meet the other man's hard, blue gaze. "I do."

With that, the lift stopped on Level 500.