A/N: Thank you for sticking with me, and all the lovely comments - I know there's some pause in updates but making it my personal mission to speed up! :D


Chapter 12: Where Loyalties Lie

On a tiny uninhabited planet in the galaxy Althaeia at the stroke of midnight, two seasoned time travellers were lying alone on an empty, warm, and sandy blue beach, staring up at the beautiful night sky as the waves ebbed on the shore.

'You can't know every single one, that's impossible,' Rose Tyler was saying.

'Try me,' the Doctor said.

'Okay, what's in that bit?'

She held up her hand, holding her fingers slightly apart to indicate a certain area of the night sky.

The Doctor peeked through her fingers. 'That's mainly the Stra cluster,' he informed her. 'Plus there's a nebula that smells like strawberries called Esrios just a few light years beyond.'

'Okay, that bit,' she said, moving her fingers to the left.

'Kaopay, Kur, Forre, Zilseus, Paa, Sledsaa, Tox Nooph, and Opucciosh,' the Doctor replied. 'All stars in what's commonly known as the Eusebeia Cavalcade.'

'There,' she said, moving her fingers up.

'Group of planets there - Gniea ZBP4, Nagorix, Semotania, Crao LY3X, and Vunzalara.'

'Okay what's the best thing about the last planet you said?'

'Vunzalara?'

'Yeah.'

'The pancakes,' the Doctor replied without hesitation.

She smirked, lowering her fingers and shaking her head in disbelief. 'You're makin' it all up.'

The Doctor smiled. 'What do you take me for?'

'A liar?' Rose teased, laughing.

'How dare you,' he replied with mock affront.

'Okay ' she started again, and pointed once more. 'Name those two. The little dim lights just above that purple one.'

He paused, frowning. 'I don't think they have names.'

She giggled. 'Oh, just cos you don't know doesn't mean they don't have names.'

He half-smiled. 'Nope, I genuinely don't think they have any names. Probably uncharted.'

'Then let's name them,' Rose said, propping herself up on her elbows. 'The brighter one's gotta be known as "Rose", yeah?'

He laughed. 'Yeah.'

'So the other one's gotta be Doctor, yeah? So, Rose Doctor.'

'It's beginning to sound like a garden centre,' the Doctor pointed out.

She laughed. 'Okay, Rose and Theta. How's that?'

He smiled. 'Yeah. I like that.'

They sank into a comfortable silence, content to gaze up together at the twinkling stars. Eventually Rose looked to him, her eyes lit up.

'What?' he asked.

'Wanna swim?'

'Why not,' he decided.

She jumped to her feet, offering her hands to pull him upright. He took them, bouncing to his feet with a flourish. She laughed and ran off without even removing her jumper to splash into the water until she was waist deep. He followed, reaching the water's edge and feeling the water up to his ankles.

He felt compelled to stop, suddenly finding himself pausing to look at her standing there haloed by the moonlight, which was lighting up the astonishingly calm waters. She slowly reached up her hands invitingly, waiting to receive him into the water, and into the light.

'Oh,' he muttered, realising. 'I get it.'


After thirty minutes of a complete technical blackout, Panacea's systems finally came back online at 4am. Theo was asleep, Leah was eating some toast, and Jack was seriously starting to wonder where the Doctor was.

'Where the hell did your dad get to?' Jack wondered rhetorically, taking a seat at the table next to Leah. 'Seriously, keeping track of you three is a full time job. You okay, kid?'

She nodded, but said nothing.

'Wanna go back to bed?'

'No,' she replied immediately, tensing up a little. 'Please don't make me.'

'Couldn't make you even if I tried,' Jack joked, but she wasn't laughing. 'Leah, seriously, don't worry.'

Leah looked at him, her eyes filled with unfallen tears. 'But it was a nightmare.'

Jack paused, hoping Leah wouldn't be able to read him as he commenced lying directly to the six-year-old, as per the Doctor's instructions. 'Dad told me he checked you, and you're fine. It was just a nightmare, nothing else.'

She nodded silently. He gathered her up in a hug, holding onto her probably a little tighter than usual for a few moments. She looked up at him as they hugged. 'Uncle Jack?'

'Yeah?'

'You're not really gonna stop being immortal, are you?'

'I don't know,' Jack confessed.

'Please don't.'

'Why not?'

She shrugged. 'Cos you make me feel safe like Daddy makes me feel safe, and we always know you're gonna be here for us all no matter what.'

He smiled. 'Yeah, I will be.'

'So you won't change?'

'... No,' Jack decided out loud.

She smiled a watery smile, and they held each other for a little longer in the low light, until they finally let go of each other and Jack's thoughts turned back to the missing person.

'Better find out where your dad is,' he said, raising his infowatch to his mouth. 'Doctor?'

Nothing but static came back.

'Panacea?' he tried instead.

'How can I help you?'

'Know where the Doctor is?'

'My systems are still rebooting, I cannot process locational data for him. You should check with reception to ascertain his location.'

'Thanks. I'd better go,' he said to Leah, shutting off his infowatch. 'You gonna be okay here with Theo?'

She nodded. 'Yeah.'

'I'll be back in a bit.'


'You comin' in or what?' Rose shouted from the light.

The Doctor hesitated.

'Well?' she prompted, laughing.

'This is it, isn't it?' he asked weakly.

Her smile and her arms remained as they had been. 'Yeah,' she replied. 'But that's what you want, isn't it? I mean, that's why we're here.'

'But I don't want it,' he replied.

'Then why are you here?'

'I can't I can't let the disease take me over.'

'Is not too late to change your mind. You know the metaphor. You made it up. Three options. Regenerate, hang on, or die.'

'There's no point in hanging on, there's no one to save me and it'll just hurt Leah through the bond. If I regenerate it'll take me over. At least if I die now it'll give Jack, Millennia, Leah and everyone a chance to stop this infection spreading.'

'Really?'

He frowned. 'What?'

'So if you regenerate it takes you, yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'Sure about that?'

'Well probably.'

'Probably,' Rose repeated. 'It's all over on a "probably"?'

He hesitated again. '... But I can't regenerate and I can't hang on. There's nothing I can do.'

'So why aren't you walkin' to me?'

He swallowed. The next pause was extremely long.

'Theta,' she prompted.

'... I can't do this,' he realised, and dropped to his knees in the water.

'Why not?'

'... Because I'm too scared.'

'You're gonna die, why the hell would you be scared?' she wondered facetiously. 'So you can't regenerate, you can't hang on, and you can't die. That doesn't really leave much left, and we're runnin' out of time.'

He noted her words carefully. 'Not much left,' he repeated.

She gazed at him - still with that smile and her hands held out. 'I wonder how Lanwa's disease actually works? It's not like anyone's been able to study what exactly is goin' on when it spreads.'

He thought about that. 'Last time I was in this situation I talked to it. It was definitely the same consciousness I spoke to in my head as was in Rose's. It's not like speaking to seperate people, so it's not replicating or reproducing. It's one consciousness. One consciousness is both in me and Rose at the same time. So it's - quite literally - spreading itself like a network.'

'So what does that mean?' she asked.

He thought some more, his brow furrowing. 'That means there's a connection between me and Rose that's been there since day one.'

'Meanin'?'

'We're both infected so we're both on the same network. We're linked. We're connected by the Lanwa spreading itself between us.'

'And so?'

'She's here,' he realised, pushing himself to his feet and looking around. 'Rose is here - she's always been here. I just need to find her.'

Finally, she dropped her hands. Everything clicked neatly into a logical conclusion for the Doctor as he watched her wade back through the sea with a sly smile on her face.

'Rose?' he croaked.

She beamed, and spontaneously burst into a sprint to meet him in a hug that nearly knocked him over. She kissed him, before pulling back to take his face in both hands , smiling broadly.

'Hello,' she said, gazing into his eyes.

'Hello,' the Doctor responded, on the verge of laughing.

She suddenly laughed a very strange laugh, before drawing back her palm and viciously slapping him across the face. He reeled, shocked, before looking back up to see Rose had suddenly changed to the blond-haired Master.

'Hello, my love,' the Master said snarkily, grinning.

'Master?' the Doctor asked, shocked.

'Did you think I was really her? You're adorable. I wonder how far I could've taken that?'

'What!?'

'Oh, I love it when you're confused.'

'Wait, where am I?'

'Let's see if you can work it out. Go on.'

The Doctor's mind raced as he looked around the empty beach. 'I'm dead.'

The Master rolled his eyes. 'You're so dramatic.'

'But I drowned.'

The Master sighed. 'Think about it. Let's just say you aren't dead. What's the alternative?'

The Doctor thought about that, frowning deeply before his eyes suddenly shot open wide. 'Wait. If you're here No. No, no, no!'

'Yep, he's got it,' the Master confirmed.

'It's taken me over It can't have.'

'Sorry,' the Master replied, shrugging. 'You're in the infected zone. You and me for the rest of our life spans, stuck here together. All thanks to you. Thanks a lot for letting this disease infect us, Doctor. Well done. Stellar work.'

'You gave it to me and didn't even bother to tell me,' the Doctor pointed out, annoyed. 'If I knew I had disease this none of this would've ever happened in the first place.'

'Ooh, touchy. I'm not the one who didn't think to check for it. You know exactly what I did to you on the Valiant and you know the epidemiology of this disease. You should have checked and kept yourself contained. You didn't. You know why? Because you're too busy prancing around with humans and primitively making those dumb kids you call gallifreyans.'

The Doctor ignored the jibe, far too concentrated on the matter at hand. 'No. I can't be here. I've got to go back.'

'How, exactly?'

'I've got out of the Lanwa's trap before and I can do it again,' the Doctor insisted. 'There's a way out, and I'll need your help. Sorry, but we're going to have to work together.'


After having spent twenty minutes trying to locate the Doctor, Jack finally found him in emergency care. The staff had explained the situation - Panacea had finally rebooted and emergency teleported people who had been trapped during the system failure, including the Doctor, who'd drowned and had to be revived on the floor of reception.

When Jack finally got to the emergency ward he found the Time Lord sitting up looking like a drowned rat. He was awake, although attached to plenty of machines with the heart rate monitor punctuating a steady dual rhythm.

'Doctor?' Jack said as he approached, a little surprised at just how perky he looked.

The Doctor looked up. 'Ah, Captain Jack,' he said, smiling.

'I just got told you drowned and had to be revived.'

'Yes, I did.'

'You're okay?'

'Absolutely wonderful.'

Jack frowned a little. His responses were a little strange. 'What happened?'

'That fish gave birth.'

'... You mean Jinu?'

'Oh yes, that's its name,' the Doctor replied nonchalantly.

Alarm bells were ringing in Jack's head, but he didn't show it. 'I met her in reception, she said you saved her baby's life.'

'But hasn't thought to come and see me and say thank you? I could have died permanently. That's some gratitude.'

'I'm pretty sure she and her baby are still being checked out to make sure they're okay.'

'Whatever,' the Doctor replied. 'So, I talked to Millennia.'

'What did she say?'

'She said she'd help. She's sending over all the details today.'

'So we're still on for tonight?'

'Yes. About time we got back to the time machine.'

Something wasn't right here, Jack realised. He'd never ever heard the Doctor refer to the TARDIS in that way before. Dread began to fill him as the only logical conclusion crept into his head. 'Leah won't go back to sleep, she's too scared,' he pressed, hoping for a good response.

'Oh. Well, she's not going to be infected. Not yet, anyway,' the Doctor replied with a small smile tugging at the edge of his lips.

Shit, Jack thought as he immediately knew exactly what had happened.

'I need you to promise me something.'

'Yeah?'

'If I get infected, I want you to kill me.'

Jack had to play this carefully.


'C'mon,' the Doctor pressed. 'Any ideas?'

'Are you serious? There's nothing we can do,' the Master replied.

The Doctor ignored that. 'This is a psi disease that's gained sentience. This has never, ever happened before, and we're having trouble fighting it because we don't actually know how it works. So let's try answering a few questions. Question one. We're clearly ourselves with our own minds and thoughts, somehow put together into one place ' He briefly looked around, gesturing at the beach. 'So where exactly are we?'

'Does it even matter?'

'C'mon,' he urged. 'So we know for a fact that this disease operates on psi energy - meaning telepathy and dreamstates. We also know that it's only one consciousness, spreading across the infected people. We know as well that it accesses and uses the knowledge of the people it's hosting. For this, it has to make some kind of psychic network between the infected to connect itself up. Therefore, the conclusion is we must be in the place where the infected consciousnesses meet, so to speak. Like a storeroom. We're like little memory sticks for it to access. The main host is Rose, so logically, we're inside Rose's mindscape.'

'Can't believe I'm hearing this,' the Master said, sighing.

'So question two,' the Doctor continued, ignoring him again. 'Where's Rose? If all of the fully infected are stored together, then she should be here too.'

'Well, that's easy,' the Master said, and pointed across the beach to something in the distance. 'Over there.'

The Doctor looked up, frantically scanning where the Master had pointed. There, in the murky distance, he picked up on the outline of something ... 'Rose!' he yelled, making to run.

The Master held him back by the shoulder. 'I wouldn't if I were you.'

'Why not?'

'Because there's this pretty ugly demon version of you over there that looks ready to rip me to shreds. Won't let me get near her.'

'I need to see,' the Doctor said, and jogged across the beach until he was close enough to see. Just as the Master had described, there was a rather large and demonic-looking version of himself standing there like a rock, his arms folded with a hard stare, gazing straight at him and the Master, as if daring them to approach something he was guarding behind him. The Doctor couldn't see what it was guarding, but he instinctively knew that it was Rose Tyler.

'It's Rose's Dream Guardian I created for her,' the Doctor realised. 'That means we're definitely in Rose's dream.'

'Dream Guardian?' the Master repeated. 'You gave her a Dream Guardian? Unbelievable. I knew you were stupid, but not quite this stupid. That's like playing with dark magic. No wonder she got infected; you wrecked her entire brittle human psyche.'

'It helped her.'

'Yes, looks like it,' the Master said facetiously.

'He's become completely corrupted, but he's still guarding her. That's good.'

'How exactly is that good?'

'Because that means she's safe.'

'For now,' the Master pointed out.

'So question three,' the Doctor started again, spinning back around to the Master. 'Does the disease actually know this network exists?'

'It's never been sentient and never been able to spread like this, why would it?' the Master pointed out, as if the Doctor was a complete idiot. 'It probably barely knows that it's a disease. Probably thinks it's a living thing.'

'Then we've got somewhere to start fighting back from where it can't hear us,' the Doctor concluded. 'I just need to stave it off long enough to get the cure. Rose is the main host, if she's cured the network should fall apart and the disease goes back to being dormant in us.'

'You found a cure? Seriously?' the Master asked, genuinely interested. 'Where?'

'Doesn't matter where,' the Doctor dismissed.

'Oh, that means it's not good,' the Master concluded. 'This is all just theory, anyway. You have absolutely no idea what's going on.'

'No, but neither do you,' the Doctor shot back. 'I'm just trying to save your life, feel free to help at any point.'

'So remind me, how exactly are you getting out of here?'

The Doctor abruptly realised he really didn't know.


It wasn't so much a case of the Doctor being discharged, rather him just walking out after ten minutes and leaving the medical staff to shout after him.

Jack stayed closer to him than ever before, acutely aware of what he had to do next and desperately trying to think of what he could do to avoid it.

But he couldn't. He'd made a promise. And the Doctor had been right - of course he had - if the disease now ran him and got anywhere near the TARDIS, it was complete game over. Everything the Doctor had built for himself in the past few years with Rose was going to die - Leah and Theo included. Then potentially the entire universe could be wiped out.

He had to kill the Doctor. His best friend. The man he'd adored for a very, very long time. Everything they'd been through together - the Year That Never Was, the Shadow Proclamation, the Moirai - it was suddenly all so poignant. Everything had been leading to this moment.

The Doctor had trusted Jack to murder him. And Jack was loyal enough to do it.

'Let's chat in your room,' Jack said to the Lanwa-infected Doctor. 'Try and get a good plan going.'

'Okay,' the Lanwa said, and disappeared into the Doctor's room.

Jack waited until he was gone, and then moved to the food preparation area. He retrieved the sharpest knife he could find and slipped it in his inside pocket. Finally, feeling completely numb, he checked the kids weren't around, and followed.