Ok, ok, I know this took ages... Just couldn't get myself to write thispart although I hate to leave things unfinished. I hope I'll be quicker next time, I plan to get this done before the new season starts. I kind of hate this story by now because I discovered how small my vocabulary really is and I'm somewhat intimidated to continue because I feel like a child playing while the grown-ups do the real art. Can't get rid of me though, as I said: Unfinished buisness is bad. Beware, longest part I ever wrote.

Well, so thanks again to my lovely beta glindapenguin, she had to suffer a lot of typos this time :)

No one's here and I fall into myself
This truth drives me into madness

- Evanescence

-----

"It was weird, time seemed to stop. Like in 'The Matrix'."

"Huh?"

"You know, that movie." When she spotted that Jack was still lost she sighed.

Jack was clearly not the right person to take care of her bruises, instead of helping her he had made a mess out of the med bay.

Ploughing through drawers and cabinets, taking and sometimes throwing more or less useful things at her he shot her a curious glance now. He clearly had no idea what she was talking about. Grasping the concept that he was in fact from the 51st century was sometimes difficult, even if she lived in a box that was bigger on the inside than on the outside.

"We should definetly improve your 21st century pop culture."

Sitting on the metal examining table Rose's lap was already covered with bandages, pills of various colours and sizes and some other, clearly alien stuff. Something that looked very much like a small pink pineapple tried to crawl out of her hand while she poked it to figure out what it was meant for. Suddenly a thought struck her.

"Why did you let go of his shoulder like it was a hot plate?"

Jack turned to look up, still pulling out more things from a cabinet under a sink.

"You remember what I told you about my two missing years?"

He produced a silver object which reminded Rose of an expensive pen. His gaze was fixed on the thing, but his mind was clearly somewhere else entirely.

"My dreams about that are not very enjoyable."

Fiddling with the pen-thing he came to stand in front of her again. Only something dark deep down in his eyes betrayed that he was not as indifferent as his matter of fact tone would suggest. He held the object to her neck, targeting one of the bruises.

"Back there... lets just say it wasn't pleasant to see nightmares when you're awake."

He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.

She nodded, much to Jack's annoyance, who tried to keep track of the dark red spots while she was speaking.

"He said something like that when I fell asleep before. Said it had to do with him being empathic. Says it happens when he lets go."

The pen-thing was clearly not doing what it was supposed to do, as Jack shook it and then threw it to the other stuff piling up in her lap.

He returned to the cabinets, clearly deep in thought about what she had just said.

"You've been with him longer, what do you know about his race?"

"Well, he said he was a Time Lord."

Jack smiled. "Thought as much. This ship, couldn't be any other race. But they'rea myth."

"He said he was the last of his kind." she added quietly and looked down onto her hands, trying to figure out what to say next. Jack threw some more useless stuff at her but stayed quiet, too. She cleared her throat.

"So you know what's wrong?"

"No idea. But my brainscan didn't look healthy, even if he is of a race only known as legend... and my headache clearly states that it's not healthy for us."

He seemed to have found what he was looking for, inspecting an ampoule containing a yellowish liquid. He picked the silver pen back up.

"As it is, I definetly won't walk around without a gun any longer."

He pushed the ampoule into the pen-thing that suddenly looked scarily like a gun to her. No flirting, no grinning. He was dead serious. When he saw her shocked look he added

"Filled it with anaesthetics. If he gets funny again, I'll put him to sleep until we figuresomething out."

"Won't help though."

They both jumped as they spotted the Time Lord leaning in the doorframe. He had suceeded in sneaking up on them again, and now entered theroom, ignoring that Jack stepped protectively in front of Rose.

"I would be too fast for you to target me with that thing. And this..." he pointed at the ampoule "...won't stop me. Human stuff. Different metabolism."

"So what do we do?" She tried hard not to sound scared, but the cold stone in her stomach didn't let her.

He didn't answer, clearly evading the long overdue explanation they needed to hear. Instead he took a look at her bruises.

"How's your neck?"

When his glance swept over the dark marks it felt as if his hands were strangling her again. She quickly brushed it away by rubbing her throat, not meeting his eyes.

"Hurting."

She didn't shy away from him when he neared her this time, switching some settings of his sonic screwdriver. His hand held her cheek away so he could take a better aim at the bruises. It was cold, like his voice when he spoke. Jack still eyed him, pen-thing ready, but didn't step in.

"I was in the console room talking to you. Then I looked up again and you weren't there."

Jack observed his every move as she felt the sonic screwdriver dance over her hurt skin. The Time Agent shook his head.

"Not exactly. You yelled at us to get away while you were trying to find out what has gone wrong with your landing. So I thought it was time to get that fixed."

He gestured at Rose's neck. The Doctor's blue eyes were so close to her face, yet they kept looking away from hers.

"So, why are we on the moon instead of London?"

His hand wasn't holding her cheek that firm and so it didn't keep her face from turning towards him in surprise.

"Can't you remember? Something went wrong, a fuse blew or something."

Ever so softly the Doctor pushed a strand of hair away from her shoulder to get a better look at her wounds. He was still not looking at either of them.

Rose noticed sadly that he took his hand away from her cheek before she noticed that the pain at her throat had left, too.

She smiled at him when he stroked over her skin, checking his work. Obviously the marks were gone. But he didn't grin as he usually would, only sighed and turned to face Jack instead.

"Want to scan me with that thing of yours again?"

Jack's eyes widened when he compared his previous data with the scan he took now.

"That black thing grew! About 25 bigger than the last time."

The Doctor nodded, clearly expecting that outcome. He slumped down in a metal chair, running his hand over the back of his head.

"And every time it does that it shuts down some of my brain areas. When I was..."

he hesitated and shot her a quick glance full of regret.

"... attacking you it clearly ate up some of the emotional centers along with the part responsible for time distortion."

He hesitated again, then grinned his usual manic smile.

"You see Captain, I won't go all Matrix on you two ever again, that area had its last cameo back in my room."

Somehow the word 'last' made her shudder.

"How do you know for sure?"

"Usually it's a conscious thing. I tried. Can't do it anymore."

That explained his slurred moves. The stone in her stomach grew. But Jack had other things in mind and didn't stay quiet as she did.

"What will happen when it grows more?"

"I honestly don't know. Suppose finally the parts that keep my body going will die, too."

The now useless medications, bandages and a squealing pineapple-thing clattered onto the ground when Rose jumped down from the table.

"How can we stop it?"

"You can't."

"But- "

His grin fell away, the desperation beneath more visible than ever, it didn't leave when he took her hand into his. His eyes were pleading now.

"That's why I need you off this ship. I've got no time left. You'll be stranded here. Or worse."

"We have to do something! You can't just give up."

"Rose, please."

"How did it start?"

Even before he had finished her question she remembered. No, remembering was not the right word, she felt it. His hand felt so heavy in her own.

"The Dalek survived, maybe some of your people did too."

"No. I'd know."

he pointed at his temple "In here. Feels like there's noone left."

He let go of her hand, looking at her in shock. Her face showed the same. This was not good. He hadn't let go of control, something like that should not have happened. Humans weren't even able to do that sort of thing with one of his race. With any race really. Small ape brains, this was impossible.

"Did you feel that?"

She swallowed and nodded. She seemed to realize at last.

"This... this is because of your people, right? Because you're alone?"

He sighed, surrendered to explaining when he saw that Jack's looked as confused as Rose. There had been times he had loved being a teacher, but not about this. He pointed at his temple again.

"Telepathy is a funny thing."

Gods, how he had hated this connection, always reminding him that they could find him, use him as their lap dog if they wished. And they had. The memory grew painful when he remembered some of the voices in his mind that he had enjoyed so much.

"Imagine being in a room, filled with people, and they're all talking, until you can't quite hear anything in particular. That's what it feels like... that's what it felt like."

He grinned again, but it didn't light up Rose's face as it should.

"It was quite annoying... Now that room is empty. Much better." His smile faded, it cost too much strength.

She grasped his hand even stronger than before and for a moment he wondered how such a fragile thing could give him so much support.

Then he tasted the familiar flavour of blood in his mouth again. He felt how she touched his face, but her words were lost to him.

A roaring hurtled through his brain, shutting out everything else. He thought he heard an alarm somewhere in the storm coming and saw Jack look at his wrist.

So he knew what it was, it was happening again.

One emotional wave was one thing, two were fine, but human brains were not made for this kind of energy. He had to get them off this ship.

The pain, the pain was coming back.

He wanted to get up, but his legs didn't obey, he could barely stop his downfall with his arms, panting, facing the floor.

A small red sphere of blood made its way towards the floor, taking a millennium to fall. Where was that coming from? Was he hurt? He had to get them home. Now.

He felt her touch his face again, cool against his burning skin, forcing him to look into her frightened face. Time was pulling at him, crashing down, stretching him into all directions.

Losing time.

He didn't think that they would understand, didn't know if he had uttered the words or merely thought them.

Memories of a thousand different places screamed at him, paths through the entangled dimensions of time gaped their dark mouths at him, and he was caught in the middle, still hearing his blood hit the ground.

Faces of friends long gone, places that didn't exist or would never exist danced through his memory, even his vision, his body feeling the force of 8 lifetimes.

And there it was, his nightmare reaching him once again.

The greater the event, the greater the attraction. The gravity pulling him in.

So quantum physics applied to brains as well as time. If he could have moved he would have laughed. But time was not letting him. The past kept him nailed to the spot, causality freezing him, the gravitation of the Time War pulling him into a direction he didn't want to go. He was back again.

Honey, I'm home. Death, the destroyer of worlds is home.

Oppenheimer talking somewhere in the past, while shooting stars hurried towards the sickly brown surface of the planet in front ofa deep red sky. Burning, burning forever.

And they thought time was theirs here.

Gallifrey. Rassilon once said that everything ended the way it began.

Did he know? Did the bastard know?

And every shooting star a burning ship. Dalek, Time Lord, didn't matter in the end.

Somewhere in the future he heard someone scream at him. Was it Susan? Little Susan screaming her last goodbye? No, her voice was long lost in the screams of an entire race.

Where was I? I see the past with one eye and the future with the other. I am a Time Lord, and time is meaningless to me. The past I can change, the future I can influence, the present doesn't exist for my kind anymore.

Finding the present was hard, but suddenly he felt someone grip his face. He felt a palm hit his nose.

That hurt.

Somewhere someone was slapping him. Like mother, like daughter. A quiet voice pleading him to come back.

He turned away, pulled himself out of entangled universes, looking up from the puddle of blood that still reflected a sickly red sun, to see Rose.

Rose, trying to keep him awake, keep him sane. His anchor. The proof that he was still there. She never knew how much she saved him on that night in London. Rose in a halo of golden light.

He clung to the present like a drowning sailor in a sea of time, but his strength faded.

Before he was lost in time again he saw that blood was dripping from her nose, too.

And that scared him even more than the memories that claimed him now.