A/N: I'm sorry this had taken so long, but I've been in Chicago for two weeks, and then my computer DIED! Horror of horrors I lost everything! ... for about a week. Then I brought it to the One of Great Comp Skillz. He fixed it for me. -huggles- So sorry it's a bit delayed, but here it is:

The Final Chapter:

On A Wolf And A Whim

Part 5 Catch Her If She Falls

By Literary Litany

Rose whirled around, suddenly strong enough to easily break his grip as her eyes flashed with a golden-speckled anger. "What are you doing?" She demanded, but already the façade was dropped. The Bad Wolf had been hoping to leave him out of things, but it looked like the Doctor had gotten himself involved.

"I'm making sure you don't destroy the universe." He said, with that deadly calm in his voice. "You brought the Beast into my ship. You were going to set it free." Anger and rage like he'd rarely shown bubbled just under the surface, evident, he was sure, to that perceptive creature before him.

"I caged the Beast!" It protested with that pleading tone Rose used to so easily sway him. It only served to strengthen his anger. "It can't get out until-"

"Until you release it on some unsuspecting world?" He demanded, voice harsh. "Or until it eats its way through its cage to what's left of Rose's mind after what you've done to her?"

"No! I haven't harmed Rose! I keep her separated, keep her safe." The wild look of desperation eked its way into the Bad Wolf's gaze. It needed him to believe her. It couldn't harm Rose.

"You're using her to cage the Beast! Whether her mind is safe from it or not," His voice was laced with his disbelief of her assurances, and she almost interrupted. "Her body can't take this. It'll destroy her."

"I've healed the body. Made it stronger." She said in a tone that dared him to contradict her.

He shook his head, the anger flashing in his eyes before he could again curb the flow of emotion. It was trying to get him caught on the smaller points, trying to distract him. He couldn't let that happen. "Good, then you can leave, and Rose will still be safe."

"But I am Rose!" She took a step toward him, reaching for his hand even as he winced away and stuck both in his pockets.

"Don't." He warned, and the look on her face ceased to be Rose's any more. Instead it was full of an arrogance that had never been hers.

"But I am her. I am what the universe had made of her. A Rose without ignorance."

The Doctor shook his head, anger giving way a bit to a sadness that might have been born of pity. "I'm afraid you're not. Because you didn't come from Rose's link to the Time Vortex." His gaze became intense enough to affect even the confident and powerful Wolf. "You're just the remnant of a wish with the power of the black hole to draw on." That gaze shifted once more: out into the void behind her. "My guess is you're part of the fail-safes the planet had. It locks on to the closest power with good intentions and gives it a boost."

Her head shook violently, and she took a step away from him and closer to the horizon of the black hole. A fleeting look of pain and denial crossed her features. "It can't be true… Can't be…" Her voice died quickly, eyes glowing golden as she watched the flickers of light in the darkness.

He watched her watching it, and took a calming breath, anger no longer visible. "You have to go. Take the Beast with you, and go."

Her head snapped back to face him. "I don't want to die."

His expression was infinitely sad. "No one does." He took a step back from her, from the image of Rose afraid of death, but still so strong. "You know the alternatives. The final choice is up to you."

There is a pause during which he thinks he can almost hear the raging wind of that dangerous black hole outside. That's impossible, of course. Black Holes don't have a sound, at least not normal ones, but he thinks he hears it all the same.

He'd never liked to do this. To ask others to die. It wasn't fair that the universe kept making him do it. Why couldn't the Bad Wolf have been like Pete Tyler and figured it out for itself? Now, there was a selfish thought. He wanted Rose back, and that had been clouding his judgment. Maybe there was another way he was missing…?

"I'll go." She managed with the aged look that he'd been known to wear on occasion. "But first…" She trailed off with an indecipherable look in those luminous orbs. He wasn't ready for what happened next.

She kissed him.

A burst of light and color danced before his eyes and he could feel the Bad Wolf in his mind as well as on his lips. Tell her. It demanded, willing him to believe that Rose could be his. Showing him through Rose's mind how much she wanted it too.

All that was. His own pain at the many times he'd almost lost her drove into his heart like a knife, followed shortly by another pain, compounded by fear: All the times Rose had almost lost him.

"What use are emotions if you will not save the woman you love?" The Dalek's question morphed meanings when echoed by the Bad Wolf. What use was loving her, if she never knew?

"I've got the moves, but I wouldn't want to boast."

"C'mon then. Show me your moves." She'd invited him time and again. Tried jealousy to rouse him, and assumed he was like any other man who would just act on his feelings. He'd almost managed to convince her there weren't any a few times.

"Are you alright?"

"I'm always alright." But he wasn't.

All that is. Her smile, that cheeky grin, a selfless devotion to him, and a thirst for life as unquenchable as his own. He could see her vividly, feel all that made him care for her almost as though he could touch it…

All that ever could be. He could hear Rose's laugh, rising with his own as they watched a quadruple sunset on the beach at Cholros. He'd found where she was most ticklish, along her ribs, and as he cease his attack the laughter slowly died away. He still had her pinned though, hovering just over her as they lay in the sand. He met her gaze with one of those rare serious expressions. "You'll stay with me?" There was a hint of disbelief in the question.

"Forever." She breathed, the air tickling onto his face, and he couldn't tell who had initiated the kiss, only that it was happening. Not the first, and certainly not the last.

The touch, both mentally and physically, was gone. Those intent and determined alien eyes watched him, and it took a step back toward the void. "Catch her when she falls." It asked, more a command than a plea. He nodded mutely, and she turned to face the black hole that had, in a way, created her.

A light, brilliant and shining drifted from Rose's form, making her skin glow as the radiance brightened. It streamed out of her, not quickly, but with the steadiness of someone releasing a deep breath. After a moment though, the slow pace of the moving light seemed almost to shudder to a halt as a flicker of reddish darkness shot through the golden flow. The Doctor held his breath, knowing this would be the moment to 'make or break' them. Bad Wolf against the Beast.

The Beast was stronger, more raw power and experience, but the Bad Wolf was so close to its source now. All it had to do was hold on. Keep the Beast with it until it could travel that infinitesimal amount of space into the Black Hole. The Doctor watched the light as it moved, as if in slow motion, condensing into a cloud of raging colors before the door of the TARDIS. One centimeter that way. Two the other.

He didn't even catch the final movement, when all of it suddenly shot straight out into the hungry empty void. It disappeared, like all the other light and matter moving into it, into nothing, to become nothing. Or so was the assumption. Maybe, as Rose suggested, it did lead to another world. Or maybe it was just empty space, to leave the Bad Wolf fighting the Beast forever.

Another pang of guilt struck. It wasn't death he'd sent her/it to. It was something worse. Something without hope.

It was then that the still standing figure of Rose began to topple, and he had to be quick on his feet to keep his promise to catch her. Laying her out on the grating he shut the doors to his time ship before returning to her side and stooping over her.

Almost out of habit his sonic screwdriver found its way into his hand, and he took quick stock of her vital signs with it. A bit out of sorts with breathing and heart-beat, but nothing moving into the dangerous levels. He let out the breath he hadn't noticed he'd been holding, slumping in partial exhaustion onto the floor next to her.

They'd made it out alive. Impossible as that sounded.

He glanced once more at Rose's unconscious form. Asleep, he convinced himself. Just asleep.

He wouldn't yet let himself consider the possibility that the Bad Wolf had taken her with it.

A/N: Heh, heh. Please, don't kill me. Yes, this is the last chapter. Yes, I am an evil, EVIL fanfic writer, but I blame it completely on my friends. They told me to make it a cliffie, well, more demanded(they had plastic swords pointed at me!). Anyway, last chapter yes, but I might do an epilogue, and will almost positively do a sequel, but it might be awhile. I have two other multi-chap fics I've been working on that I've wanted to get posted, but have been waiting for this one to end. So, yeah.

A wonderful thank you to everyone who reviewed, and even those of you who just read it, bringing up the hit count. It warms my heart and gives me the fuzzy-wuzzies to hear all the magnificent feed-back. You guys keep my hopes up.

A big thanks to my one and only Beta: CottonCandy Sky