A/N: Long extract in italics is from the story Time, the sixth in this series. The shorter extract is from the very first in this series, Destiny. Loads of little references to previous stories in the series as we tie up all those little loose bits from every story so far.

Good luck :o

Chapter 37: Nemesis: Part Six

The Doctor, Rose, and Jack emerged into the only part of the ship that actually seemed to be in one piece. It was clearly the bridge - as pristine white as the Doctor could see only when he closed his eyes, futuristic, and very clean. There were workstations staggered upwards with steps running up the middle, leading to the view of endless space through the screen above, where a single chair was stood.

The Doctor glanced at Rose and Jack, and then reaffirmed his grip on the sword. 'Toby!' he called.

The chair spun, and there he was, relaxed in the chair. He was exactly as the Doctor had last seen him, after the Tower of London incident. He had the stolen face of the handsome actor Clint Mendoza who had died so horribly. The Doctor knew on the inside he had healthy proficient organs harvested from his other captives. He had taken the best bits of humanity and given himself the ultimate body - heart, brain, lungs - the lot. Frankenstein's monster, made flesh.

'Ah, finally,' Toby said, smiling. 'That was pretty entertaining. What are you going to do with Braxiatel, then?'

'I'd rather talk about what I'm going to do with you,' the Doctor said.

'Straight to business, then,' Toby said, and gestured around him. 'Do you know of this place, Doctor?'

'No.'

'Well, then let me fill you in. This, Doctor, is the greatest weapon ever to be created in the history and future of the entire universe. This is a starship capable of relying on telepathic systems, ripping apart matter itself, and time travel, to name a few. This ship is completely undetectable and indestructible. How do I know it's indestructible? Because once the creators realised what a terrible thing they'd created, they decided the only way they could destroy it was to put it in the middle of the Big Bang. And even that didn't really work.' He gestured around him as a point of note. 'Sure, it's been a little fractured, but it's still accessible. Especially for you.'

'So what,' the Doctor began, 'you're going to get it back to working condition and destroy everything with it?'

'That's the plan,' Toby said, nodding. 'But there's a bit of a problem. The Big Bang may not have destroyed the ship, but it split apart the power cell and scattered the pieces of it across time and space. Ten pieces, to be precise.'

'The Moirai,' Jack realised.

Toby beamed. 'Give the man a piñata.'

'So the keys are the power cell of this ship, broken into ten pieces,' the Doctor said. 'This ship is the Moirai.'

'So called as it was said to be so powerful it altered fate itself,' Toby said, nodding. 'Down the millenia, stories have got more and more mythical around the fragments, but essentially this is the source of the entire thing.'

'And it was built by the Disciples of the Light,' the Doctor assumed. 'The same people who trapped the Beast on Krop Tor - the planet that orbited the black hole.'

'Yep. Clever people, weren't they?'

'So I take it you were the black-cloaked figure who kept leaping in to steal the keys from us?' the Doctor wondered. 'You're desperate to form that power cell.'

'I was, but it wasn't quite for that reason,' Toby replied. 'I needed you to find them for me, and you needed some encouragement. So I took the first few to get you going, thinking you had some opposition. You've done the rest for me.'

'Then you've got another problem. There's only four fragments of the Moirai left,' the Doctor informed him. 'Even if you find them this ship won't work at full capacity.'

'I don't need this ship working at full capacity,' Toby said, laughing a little. 'It's so powerful, even a quarter power would do. I've already got three, and now you're here, I've got four.'

'Sorry to disappoint, but I don't have the final key,' the Doctor said.

Toby laughed. 'You didn't work it out, yet?'

'What?'

'I guess you've probably been wondering for a while whether you're mixing up reality and fantasy, Doctor. Have you wondered whether, actually, you're still inside the rift? When you jumped in to stop the lergri, did you ever actually come out? Or are you still in there? Is all this just one big fantasy? Is that why nothing's been making sense since you woke up in that alley? Maybe, this has all been one long nightmare of a man suspended in the rift. Or maybe, that grenade you were holding is about to detonate, and your life is currently flashing before your eyes, just before it explodes and kills you permanently?'

The Doctor internally panicked. 'This is real,' he said firmly.

'You don't sound so sure.'

'I'm done with playing games, I want facts,' the Doctor snapped, getting angry now.

Tony snorted with laughter. 'By now you must've realised how much I was getting Braxiatel to manipulate you. He lied, Doctor, quite a lot, starting a very long time ago.'

The Doctor realised then, as his previous thoughts came true. 'There was never a lergri in me. It was something else.'

'Correct,' Toby said. 'And let's have a little guess what that was, shall we?'

'The final key?' Rose gasped.

'How do you think you've been finding all these keys so easily?' Toby wondered. 'How else do you think you can see what this ship looked like if you close your eyes? How else have you been able to see the future? That's why I needed you to find them. Only you could. Don't underestimate just how powerful this ship is, Doctor. It's sentient, and it's trying to auto-repair. It manipulated your fate like silly putty to try and put itself back together. I just gave it a helping hand.'

'How is one inside him?' Jack asked.

Toby shrugged. 'No idea. Maybe it picked you specifically, maybe you got it while you were in the rift. Either way, it doesn't matter. I want that key, and you're going to give it to me.'

'Fat chance,' Rose scoffed.

Toby looked at her, and laughed. 'Oh. You know so little, you stupid bitch.'

The Doctor's eyes dropped to Toby's wrist, where there was a vortex manipulator. Toby followed his gaze.

'Taken from a stupid Time Agent,' he informed them, looking at Jack.

Jack checked his own wrist. The manipulator was still there.

'From another time, idiot,' Toby said condescendingly. 'Don't suppose you even remember the time I got accidentally teleported with you, do you? At the top of Canary Wharf, when your Time Agent self shot the Doctor. I went on a little trip, right to the Time Agent HQ. I stole the manipulator and got back with it. Ever since then, I've had it. Very useful for Braxiatel and the Master.'

'How did you manage to control them?' Rose asked dryly.

'If you're worrying about whether I'm going to make your husband give me the key through mind control, worry no more,' Toby assured her. 'The Master and Braxiatel were both slowly broken over a very long period of time. It's been about forty years altogether. Even a Time Lord can't hold out for forty years. So no, I can't control your mind right here and now, Doctor, but you will give me that key of your own free will. I can guarantee you that.'

'And how do you expect to do that?' the Doctor wondered brazenly. 'I'm giving you nothing. I suppose you're going to threaten Rose or Theo with guns?'

Toby laughed. 'Don't be so crass. I respect you, Doctor, and that would be a very pathetic way to get what I need. Besides, I don't need that. I've got the advantage, see, because I know nearly everything about you. How? Because I've always been with you. In the shadows, lurking away, watching you ever since you destroyed my life when I was only eight-years-old.'

'Then let me help you,' the Doctor said. 'Whatever I did, I'll fix it.'

'You can't fix it,' Toby replied. 'Because you don't have a fucking clue who I am, and that's why this is so goddamn funny.'

'Then tell me,' the Doctor persisted. 'I want to help you, Toby.'

'You're so fucking stupid it's actually painful. All of you. Just so stupid.'

'Tell me,' the Doctor repeated firmly.

Toby laughed. 'You just can't work it out. Nobody ever asks about me. People don't care. People don't ask. In the story of the Doctor I get small paragraphs, little dialogue, because I'm just a background convenience. I'm a minor character. But I was there. I was there all the time, watching you, studying you, listening to everything you said and did. I was going along in the background, all the time. From the moment you took me from my father my hatred for you built and built, and nobody checked it. I was just a problem child. Leah was always the star kid, apple of my mother's eye. I just got ignored. It turned me into what I am today. Finally, a major character, and a major problem. Your major problem. All I had to do to completely baffle you was change my name. But only by one letter. That's how much you paid attention. One letter and you're completely fucking confused by me. Because you never gave a shit.'

The Doctor's hearts froze as he realised which letter that was, and who Toby was.

'Tony,' he muttered.

'Bingo,' Toby grated, madness in his eyes.

'Tony!?' Rose gasped.

'Hey, sis,' Tony said, looking straight at her. 'Thank you for having a conversation about names in front of me when I was eight-years-old. I wonder if you even noticed me standing there?'

'What?' she asked, wrong-footed.

'Knowing someone's name is just about the best weapon you could have. Especially someone like the Doctor, who has a million enemies.'

'You don't know my name,' the Doctor said firmly.

'No, I don't. Funnily enough, that was the one thing Braxiatel never told me, no matter how much I tried. So maybe I should tell the Universe another name they may be interested in.'

'No,' the Doctor said quickly, knowing exactly what he meant.

'Oh, but yes,' Tony said joyfully. 'I think a lot of people would be interested to know the name of the Doctor's daughter.'

'Don't you dare.'

'That's not a secret,' Jack pointed out.

'No, Jack,' Rose muttered, shaking. 'He's talking about her real name.'

'What?'

'Go on,' Tony encouraged the Doctor. 'Tell him.'

The Doctor realised he had no choice. He looked at Jack. '... After we got imprisoned in the Proclamation I realised that Leah was going to be a target, people were going to use her name against her. I had to protect her. So we gave her another name. Her real name. Her gallifreyan name. A name we pretend she doesn't have. She doesn't remember the ceremony we had, like a name day on Gallifrey. Only me and Rose. It … It keeps her safe.'

'Not for much longer,' Tony teased. 'I was right outside the kitchen when you two decided on it from that dumb book you gave Leah. Inaralia. And from that I'm guessing Alex's real name is Kershan.'

The Doctor died a little inside. 'Stop it,' he said firmly. 'Look, I accept that I took you away from your dad, but it was to save you and your mum. Your dad was getting dangerous.'

'We were never in danger,' Tony spat. 'My stupid mother thought stupid things, and you're the one that took away my dad. Twice. I fucking hate you. All of you. Ever since I was abducted by you you've all been jumping around in your fancy blue box saving the universe. The only time you stopped ignoring me was to tell me off. Everything my dad did was right. Aliens are the enemy of us, and that includes you, my sister, for fucking an alien and birthing alien spawn. So you want to know how you're going to do what I want, Doctor? I've not only got the names of your daughter and your son, but also right now I'm eleven-years-old, and inside Torchwood Tate in lockdown with all your little friends. Who knows what I've told my eleven-year-old self to do?'

'You're sick,' Rose muttered, horrified.

'Sick? No. Just well prepared,' Tony corrected. 'This has been happening for longer than you could ever know, Doctor. I've been twisting your life for so long. It was handy having my younger self inside your Tardis, ready to open teleport channels to let me in, where we surrounded ourselves with books in your library on gallifreyan anatomy that I could study and use against you all. At first I was amateur - I tried to kill your daughter in the hairdressers with a feeble plan, I tried to impersonate the Unit doctor. But then I stepped up. I found that recording of the Shadow Architect warning of your child wiping out the Proclamation, and gave it to them so they would make your life hell. I just got better and better as I learnt more about you and your ways. Every fail made me more clever. But don't credit me, it's just what I was destined to do. My eleven-year-old self is about to witness Jack returning, announcing your horrific death at my hands. And that was when I knew what I had to do. I've had that information for so long. I've known for forty years that I would eventually kill you. It's all been building to this - all for this moment. Because today is the day the Doctor loses. You can't win. Everything has fallen into place. Fate is about to completely fuck you over. A Lord of Time, killed by fate. Isn't that funny? The Moirai is going to ensure it. Your destiny is to die today, and you can't do a thing about it without ripping the Universe apart.'

The Doctor, Jack, and Rose stayed silent.

Tony laughed. 'No smart comebacks? No pointing out the flaw in my logic and telling me why I'm wrong?'

'What do you want, Toby?' the Doctor asked flatly.

'Simply, I want you dead. I also want that key inside you, and to do that I've got to, quite literally, burn away the outer layers. So. Are you going to comply and consent to being burned alive, or shall I make sure every lifeform you've ever pissed off knows the names of your children, and hunts and tortures them for the rest of their inevitably short little lives, whilst my eleven-year-old self rampages around Torchwood? And I'll warn you, your destiny has already decided what's going to happen. I just have the benefit of extra leverage.'

The Doctor stared at him, horrified. He didn't even look at his two companions. It took a few moments, before he clearly decided what he was going to do.

He dropped the sword.

'No,' Rose gasped.

'I have to,' the Doctor said weakly.

'There's a good boy,' Tony encouraged. 'Come and stand here, Doctor.' He gestured to a space beside him. 'No funny business, Harkness.'

Jack's eyes narrowed as the Doctor turned back to them. He looked so defeated.

'I'm sorry,' he muttered. 'This is my fault.'

'No it goddamn isn't,' Jack said, his teeth gritted. 'Don't you fucking dare …'

'I don't have a choice …'

'You can't do this,' Rose said quickly, her eyes filling up. 'It can't happen this way …'

'I'm losing patience,' Tony said loudly in a singsong voice.

The Doctor hugged them both tightly. 'Don't watch,' he whispered, and kissed them both. He briefly rested his hand on Rose's belly, and nodded at her.

A voice came into her head. His voice. Telepathic communication.

'If this is what destiny is, then let's see it out together. I love you, Rose.'

She frowned, but he just turned, and limped up the steps to Tony.

'Good boy,' Tony said, and slapped a hand on the Doctor's wounded shoulder. The Doctor groaned and sank to his knees as a consequence, choking out a breath. He ended up kneeling in front of Tony with his head stooped. 'Any final words?'

'Get on with it,' the Doctor spat out, still winded.

'Fair enough,' Tony replied. 'Thanks for the entertainment, Doctor,' he said as he reached behind him, and grasped what looked like a petrol can, already perfectly-placed, as fate had intended.

Tony poured the contents over the Time Lord, making sure he was absolutely soaked in petrol.

'If this is what destiny is, then let's see it out together. I love you, Rose.'

He'd said that, Rose realised, just after his future self had returned to change his past. Back then, they'd changed their apparent fate not once, but twice.

Tony drew out a matchbox from his jacket, and pulled one out.

This wasn't right, she realised. The Doctor had always maintained there was no such thing as destiny, just fixed points, and for all intents and purposes, he was right. The Moirai had been controlling their path temporarily, but that was just an effort to self-repair - to get the Doctor where he needed to go to fix the ship. Besides. The Moirai hadn't said anything about him dying today. In fact, it had shown him a future beyond this moment, a key, given to him from his future self. If the Doctor died now, he couldn't give his past self the key. Didn't Tony know that?

As the thought lingered in her head, Tony looked directly at Rose, and smirked. She slammed back down to the cold, hard earth, and the reality of what was happening.

Her little brother, she thought.

Without a beat, he promptly struck the match and set the man she loved on fire.

'If this is what destiny is, then let's see it out together. I love you, Rose.'

This wasn't their destiny, she realised. This wasn't any kind of fixed point. Just like the Doctor in his plan against Braxiatel, Tony had taken the facts and interpreted the future according to how he wanted it to be.

Rose heard the Doctor screaming, raw and with sheer agony.

Something inside her snapped. The bond blew up. Wild, pure anger burst inside every cell of her body. Everything this man had done - got her husband tortured twice, nearly killed Leah three times, killed fifty-four people in one fell swoop, nearly killed Alex, got her husband terminally ill, killed, and exiled, killed her husband's brother, and now, he was brazenly burning her husband to death ...

Then she was moving. Before she knew it, her hand had launched out to grab the Doctor's fallen sword and she started to run up the steps with some sort of superhuman power. Her arm seemed to move by instinct in her blurry, panicked vision, and things seemed to momentarily black out before she could see nothing but Tony, staring at her with his eyes full of a combination of shock, pain, and bewilderment. She was very confused, until she looked at her hand, and realised what she'd done.

She'd stabbed him, the blade pointed upwards through his chest and directly where his heart was.

She just stared, horrified. Her insides felt like they'd turned to ice. The handle of her sword was taken away from her grip as Tony collapsed.

Time distorted, and she couldn't seem to move. She had no idea how long she stayed there, staring at Tony. She closed her eyes, praying it would all go away if she kept them closed long enough. Suddenly she felt something on her arm. She squealed a little and flinched, but the pressure didn't turn malevolent.

'R-Rose,' the Doctor's voice said, struggling.

She opened her eyes, and saw him kneeling in front of her, holding her arm with a bloody hand. He was clearly in a significant amount of pain, and covered in CO2 from the fire extinguisher Jack was holding. She launched forward to hug the Doctor, immediately bursting into tears.

'Oh god, oh god,' she managed, looking over the Doctor's shoulder to see Tony on the floor, now unmoving. 'I stabbed him, I stabbed him …'

'It's okay,' the Doctor whispered.

'I stabbed him, I stabbed him,' she said again, unable to say anything else. 'Oh god …'

'R-Rose, look at m-me,' he gasped, taking her face in his bloody hands. 'It's ok-kay, I prom-mise it's okay.'

'H-Help him,' she gasped. 'Please …'

He kissed her, and placed his forehead on hers. 'Don't worry, just breathe. That's all you need to do,' he said telepathically.

'Help him!' she yelled, suddenly angry. She hit the Doctor's chest, and he choked out in pain.

'No, no, I'm sorry!' she said, shaking as she grabbed his face in both hands, crying. 'I'm s-sorry …'

'R-Rose,' he said, and putting their foreheads together again.

'I k-killed him ...'

'Just hug me. I'm not going anywhere,' the Doctor stressed telepathically again, and pulled her into a one-armed hug.

Rose buried her head into the Doctor's chest, crying so hard she thought her tear ducts were about to rupture. She couldn't believe it. This wasn't real. It was some kind of horrible nightmare, right? How could she have spent all that time stopping the Doctor from killing his brother when she could do this?

She couldn't have just stabbed her little brother.

'Help him,' she begged the Doctor. 'P-please.'

The Doctor checked over his shoulder. Jack was already by Tony. Eventually he looked up at the Time Lord, and shook his head.

'Okay?' he asked quietly, placing his hand on hers, which was still clutching Alex's.

There was a brief pause before she spoke, her voice low and calm. 'Did you try and kill Toby?'

The Doctor considered her for a moment. She wasn't looking at him. '... I thought about it.'

'... Would you have?'

The Doctor looked at her again. '... I don't know,' he replied honestly.

There was a longer pause than ever before.

'... I would've,' Rose finally whispered.

The Doctor took her into a hug, but said nothing.

For twenty minutes she just hugged the Doctor and cried, staring over his shoulder at her brother's bloody corpse.