A/N: okaaaaaaaaaaay.
1. I know that the UK doesn't have frats and sororities ... But the TARDIS doesn't ... so that's my excuse. And it just kind've fit to me, ya know? I'm not North American (let's ignore that I currently reside in Canada, shall we?), and didn't do the university thing here, so I don't even have a clue as to how they work.
2. What the hell happened here? I have no idea. I started writing something and it got away on me... soooo... sorry. (I think I know ... it's because I'm a little bit fearful of what's coming and my keyboard is stalling me with other ideas ... bastard)
3. Apparently when you're at work you have to work, so this ends rather abruptly here because I have a tonne of stuff to get through ... Additionally, if I carry it on from here it'll end up being a 6K word chapter. Let's break that up shall we?
4. If you've never listened to Jeff Wayne's the War of the Worlds (the version with Richard Burton as narrator) please do. It's so incredibly wonderful... I've been listening to this since I was a kid and I know it word for word ... but it still excites me and then breaks my heart every single time I listen to it...
5. I really hope you like this bit...
~~oooOOOooo~~
John Smith lay deep inside the dip of his pillows with both arms behind his head as he stared at the ceiling above his bed. Still in his pyjamas and dressing robe at two in the afternoon, he could hardly care that he had yet to dress and leave his quarters for the day. His lunch tray sat untouched on the table, the sandwiches no doubt turning hard and stale by the second. He hadn't taken the time to investigate just what Martha had brought him for lunch – and admittedly he was napping when she silently brought it in – but if his sense of smell was anything to go by it was a ham sandwich with mustard and cheese, quite possibly garnished with a sliced pickle or a pickled onion. The Tea was the typical black leaf blend, bland, not steeped in water anywhere near hot enough to enhance its flavour and make it taste more like tea and less like hot water with milk and sugar in it.
He let out a huff at the thought. Now Rose Tyler knew how to make a good cup of tea. Piping hot and full of intense flavour. Oh, she could take a leaf of the most boring quality and make it absolutely brilliant. She treated tea preparation like it was an art form – and wasn't she one of the masters?
John Smith let out a moan as he scraped his hands heavily down his face and kicked off the comforter that had shifted down to his legs.
Why was he thinking such impossible things? Rose Tyler had never prepared him a cup of tea, how could he possibly assume that she'd be anywhere near that good at it?
He held his hands over his face and moaned again. Oh, maybe Joan had mentioned it to him during one of their many conversations as they walked the school grounds in the evening. Joan liked a decent cup of tea, perhaps Rose had worked her magic on the stale Farrington leaf and the matron had indulged in a cup or two.
Rose Tyler.
Why had that woman managed to rattle him so much? He'd barely met her three times since she came to Farrington with her son in tow, yet he couldn't stop thinking about her. She was a complete stranger to him, yet so impossibly familiar that he felt as though they'd known each other for a lifetime….
…and that he'd loved her for that long.
He moaned again when he closed his eyes and saw her looking back at him with a cheeky and flirtatious smile that held just a hint of a plump pink tongue in its teeth. It was an image so horrifically and immediately arousing that he found himself writhing just slightly on his back and panting a pair of quick breaths to quell it.
Because he couldn't think of her that way. Not anymore. According to Martha, Rose Tyler was now officially Mrs. Doctor Smith. Which made her completely untouchable.
…And what about Gallifrey? Did he have to give up that wonderful child as well? Because as much as Rose denied it, he knew that child was his. No. Not just knew it; he felt it. He felt a connection with that boy so deep inside his soul that there was nothing, no power in the universe that would make him believe otherwise.
He gave that boy his name; that he was sure of more than anything else. More than even his own presence here, now, John Smith – History teacher at Farrington.
But why Gallifrey? Why choose a name like that? What meaning did it have to him?
Gallifrey. Gallifrey. Gallifrey.
It was a good, powerful, and dignified name for sure; but …? He rolled the word around his tongue a few times and moaned to himself. Of course. That's where he knew it from. It's the name of the small township he grew up in as a child before heading to London to go to university.
He huffed as he buried his head deeper into the pillow, which awkwardly dropped his chin into his chest and made his breathing somewhat loud and wheezy, and tried to think back to his days at University to pinpoint the moment he met Rose and fathered her child.
He knew that he had played the field a little when he arrived in London. He knew that freedom from the shackles of a small town had given him a sudden a short-lived wild ride of exploration, alcohol, and debauchery. Why, that was the standard behaviour from the students once the bell had tolled to end a day of study. He had hazy memories of joining a fraternity – Theta Sigma – and indulging in the many activities shared between his fraternity and its associated sorority. That's where he met her! It had to be. Rose must've been a sister of the sorority lorded over by his frat brothers.
His laboured breathing deepened as he desperately tried to recall something – anything – from his days at the University. He clenched his eyes shut and practically found himself snoring as he dug yet deeper into the pillow in an effort to find anything in his memory that wasn't just a feeling about what happened.
"Show me something," he growled through a frustrated curl in his lip. "Show me Rose Tyler and what we shared together."
When nothing came, he clenched his fists and pounded a single strike of both hands against the mattress of his bed. "Something! Anything!" He inhaled deeply with a wheeze. "I can feel her! I can feel my heartbreak over her … for God's sake show me something to tell me what happened between us."
He felt the corner of his eye bubble with a tear as he struggled to remember. He felt stuffiness in his nose from his upset and let his lips part slightly to breathe through his mouth. His open mouth wheezed and whined his inhales and exhales as his breaths struggled to pass through his constricting throat.
The wheeze and whine was practically musical and overtook his mind as painful pinpricks of bright light dotted a muted donut image that stained the darkness of his tightly clenched eyes. Each of those bright little pinpricks suddenly expanded and merged into a soul-shattering image of a sun-drenched land of brilliant reds and oranges overlooked by proud citadel towers encased in a crystal sphere.
His breath caught as he found himself compelled to run toward the dome in the distance. He looked down to his feet, dressed in dusted and torn leather boots wrapped over equally dusted and torn loose trousers, and willed himself to run.
"I can't stay here," he said to his feet. "I can't die here. If I die, I rewrite time and she's gone. I'll lose them both." He looked back up. "But I can't lose all this. My home. I can't."
He twisted his head to the side. He tried not to look at the abandoned and dilapidated barn that he'd run from only moments ago. He didn't want to look. Inside it sat the weapon he'd stolen from the Omega Arsenal. Inside that old building was a weapon capable of destroying not just Gallifrey, but the entire constellation of Kasterborous if he so decided it should do so.
He'd intended to use it to end the war, to end the battle between two species that had already destroyed planets in its wake and looked ready to take the universe itself if it continued.
…But he couldn't. He couldn't do it. There was still hope, there had to be. He just had to keep fighting.
He felt the grit of dirt on his face as he wiped at his watering eyes and then grimaced as he forced his legs to run toward the citadel. "I have to get to the TARDIS. I have to keep pushing on."
His machine's whining scream of warning, and of her desperation for him to safely reach her, echoed off the rocky dunes and hills surrounding them both. "I'm coming, old girl," he hollered in a croaking and weary voice. "Stop complaining."
His rapid approach halted with a skid of his feet in the loose dirt of the disused trail as Arcadia's crystal dome drew closer with each stride. His hearts felt as though they'd stopped inside his chest as he witnessed the sudden and horrific shattering of the Arcadia's mighty protective dome and the victorious metallic cry of a thousand Dalek warriors ordering extermination of the citadel and all of her people.
It was with the calm of a defeated man that he whispered to himself that Arcadia had fallen. Gallifrey's last defence, her last beacon of hope to the people of his planet, was gone.
…Gallifrey now belonged to the Daleks.
"No." He muttered cruelly to himself. "I can't let that happen." His eyes flicked to his blue machine. "We can't give the gateway to the time vortex to the Daleks." He inhaled a shaking breath through his mouth. "I have to destroy Gallifrey. I've got no choice."
The TARDIS whined sadly in agreement.
He swallowed a lump and twisted to stand sideways toward the abandoned building. His breath shook and his eyes flooded with tears as he slowly drew his arm upward with his Sonic Screwdriver in his hand. His thumb hovered over the activation switch to the sonic and his hand shook with terrified apprehension. "I'll be the only one left," he whispered in a shattered breath. "The last of my kind." He sniffed. "It's my penance for doing this to my people."
He coughed with a painful sob. "I can't…"
A whisper kissed against his ear as an arm slid around his waist and a supportive hand glided along his arm to help steady his aim with the Sonic. "It's okay, Doctor. I'm here. I've got you."
He felt her press her chest against his back and clutched desperately at the arm she held across his belly. "Rose…"
Her lips pressed against his shoulder followed by her cheek as she steadied his extended arm with her hand. "I'm here."
"You always knew this was going to happen, didn't you?"
She nodded against his shoulder but said nothing.
"You knew I destroyed my people, that I killed them all."
She held him tighter. "You saved the universe, Doctor."
He inhaled deeply though an open mouth, and although he still held up his arm with his sonic at the aim, he dropped his head. "My planet and my people are the collateral damage?"
"There's been so much collateral damage because of this war, Doctor," she answered him sadly. "It has to end. The Time War has to end before the entire universe is destroyed along with it."
"Please," he whimpered in a tiny and desperate voice. "Please talk me out of it, Rose. Please don't make me do it."
"The decision's yours, Doctor," she whispered against his ear. She slid her body around him, curling around him to stand chest against chest with him. Her arms curled around his waist and she looked up into his sad and weary eyes. "I can't make your decision for you. I can only hold your hand and support the choice you decide to make."
He nodded slowly. "Will you still love me, Rose? Can you love a man who destroyed his people – who let his planet and his people burn?"
She slid her hands up to his face and cupped tenderly at his dusty jaw. "I fell in love with the man who ended the Time War," she assured him. "And I will always love him – no matter what you decide to do today."
He sniffed and a tear tracked down his cheek. "If I let Gallifrey survive today, then you and I will never…"
She cut him off by rolling up onto her toes and slamming her mouth bruisingly against his. Her kiss was hard, fast, and desperate … and far too short. He locked one arm tightly around her hips and hauled her up against him in search of another one of those searing kisses. She evaded his mouth a moment and pressed her finger against his lips.
"Whatever you decide, Doctor. Whether or not it will change your own personal future and our history, I will always. Always. Love you." She swallowed and heavily dragged her finger along his lip. "Powel Estate. London. March. 2005. No matter your decision here now, you still have the power for us to meet and start a different journey with Gallifrey still in the skies."
"Not if the entire universe is at stake. If I don't destroy Gallifrey, there won't be a universe left for us."
She managed to put on a smile for him. "Then we'll just have to find ourselves a parallel one, won't we?"
He didn't laugh. "Tell me that you love me, Rose."
"I love you, Doctor."
He dipped his head. "Kiss me."
"Doctor?"
"Please. I need you to kiss me, Rose," he begged. "Give me some light in this darkness."
Again she rolled up onto her toes to press her mouth against his, this time with a passionate embrace that was far less hurried and desperate. She held her press unmovingly against his mouth for a moment as she waited for him to open to her. After a few moments the Doctor hadn't truly reciprocated the kiss he'd asked for, and as she let out a breath of understanding and slight disappointment, the Doctor's arm suddenly flexed across her back and dragged her tightly up against him. He growled as he opened himself fully to her tipped his head almost a full ninety-degree drop to be able to get in as close and as deep inside her as possible.
His decision made, the Doctor locked his arm yet tighter around her waist and depressed the button of his Sonic. As the ground below their feet rumbled, he dropped his arm to circle it around her waist beside his other one. He dipped his knees to drop the hold of his hands below the rise in her ass and then straightened up to lift her off the ground.
Rose whimpered a desperate and wanton sound into his mouth as she curled her legs around her hips and tried to intensify the kiss. Her desperation seemed to increase as he walked her back to where the TARDIS waited for them on the sands of Gallifrey. She raked her fingernails through his fauxhawk, which made him take his mouth from hers, tilt his head backward, and groan up into the Gallifreyan sky like a wolf howling to the moon.
She sighed his name as she dropped her mouth onto his neck and sucked deeply.
His head fell forward and he nudged at her cheek with his to coax her mouth back toward his. "We don't have the time to do what I want to do," he whispered, peppering her swollen lips with the breath of eleven syllables of disappointment.
"A Time Lord out of time," she sighed. She looked at the ground and then back up to him. "How long until it happens?"
"Only moments," he answered solemnly. "You should get back."
She bit at her lip and nodded.
"Will I ever forgive myself for this?"
She shook her head as a tear ran down her cheek. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he pleaded softly as he set her feet on the ground in front of her TARDIS doors. "Don't ever be sorry. Not for anything."
She drew her fingertip down along his face. "Never."
"Tell Gallifrey I love him," he asked with a smile and a stroke of his dirty thumb across her cheek. "And that I'll see you both soon."
"Gal says he loves you," Rose said with a smile. "He told me to tell you that before I left. No matter what, Dad – he said – You're always my hero."
His face fell. "Even today?"
"Today more than any other," she assured him with a final small kiss against the side of his mouth. "Now, my Doctor. Go into your TARDIS, regenerate, and come find me," she ordered softly. "And let me heal you – like I'm supposed to do."
He nodded and pressed his lips to her cheek. "Powel Estate. London. March. 2005?"
"Hendricks, actually," she corrected softly. "Nestine Consciousness, basement, possessed mannequins and one word…"
"What word?"
She stepped backward into the TARDIS and held onto the doors. "You'll work it out," she offered him with a wink. "Just like you always do." She motioned to close the door, but stopped and opened them again. "And just. Just so you know. Between now and, well, then…" She bit at her cheek and looked up at him with a touch of her tongue in her cheek. "If, in your next body, you need some company…" Her smile stretched. "I'm only a hypercube away."
He offered her a weak, but grateful, smile. "I'll see you in ten minutes."
She ran out of the TARDIS and straight into his arms again. Her mouth was against his and her arms locked around him tight at the instant she was upon him. He gratefully took her in, securing her fiercely in his arms and returning her kiss with blinding intensity.
"Mourn them," she suggested softly as she dragged her mouth from his. "But don't let the memory of this destroy you."
"How can I make you that promise?"
"Because I promise you, that we make it right," she vowed. "You, me, Gal. Together it's right, yeah?"
"I love you," he vowed inside a passionate growl as he claimed her mouth with a fast and hard kiss. His release of her was just as fast and hard. "No go," he demanded as the ground began to tear up beneath them. "Gallifrey's about to go."
Rose nodded frantically and spun on her heel to rush in a curl around the TARDIS doors. Almost as soon as the doors closed, the old machine pitched a whine and wheeze and disappeared before his eyes. His own machine called to him and the Doctor spun to run toward his own capsule. Her doors banged on their hinges as he approached and then flung open to let him fall in through the doors. He was face-first in the grating with his legs hanging out of the TARDIS doors, but the mighty ship took off anyway. He felt the dip in his stomace and the press of his body against the floor of the console room as she accelerated of the surface of the planet and shot up into the space above Gallifrey.
"Wait!" He scrambled to his knees . "Don't leave yet. Let me see." He panted as he crawled to the open door of the TARDIS and leaned heavily against the door. The ship jolted to a halt, which toppled the Doctor to his ass. He held onto the doorframe like a child clinging to the stairwell railing watching over a parental argument. "I have to make sure."
Below him, the ancient planet began to split and tear itself apart. His mind screamed with the terrified cries of every person his planet held. He clutched tightly at his head and let out an anguished cry of his own as Gallifrey finally succumbed to the mighty power of the weapon he'd chosen to use against his home…
He'd never see the twin suns rising over the mountains and setting the forest ablaze with the magnificent play of sunlight against their silver leaves. He'd never taste the waters of the Cadonflood River and verbally spar with this likes of Braxiatel, Romana, Borusa, Andred or Leela ever again…
Time had lost its guardians. He was all alone.
"By Rassilon," he moaned as he fell helplessly against the door of the TARDIS and began to weep. "What have I done?"