"You want to what?"
"The anti-grav Olympics! I want to go to them," she told him, and he looked at her, confused.
"What for?" he asked.
"What're anti-grav Olympics?" Rose asked, dancing up to Anna's side.
After the whole incident where Anna had saved her mother, she'd warmed right up to her.
"Olympics that don't have gravity."
"And dead boring!" he told her. "I can think of at least five better places that we can travel to-"
"Relax, Doctor, we don't have to go to the one where you came in 27th place!" she teased him, and he looked at her.
"Obviously we wouldn't go to that one," he told her. "But who'd have spectator sports when you can have the real thing?"
She blinked at him. "I'm not even sure what that means."
Things had gotten easier between them as well since her confession. He now understood better that it wasn't just trauma affecting her, it was grief, something he knew all too well about that. He helped her by throwing them into sight-seeing and adventure, effectively distracting her with new planets and places that she'd never been before (which usually meant he'd put the Tardis on random and hoped a version of himself had never taken her).
There were also jokes. Quite a bit of jokes.
Distracting her distracted him, and Rose helped to ease the pain of the past so that, on the rare occasion he did sleep, there was an even rarer occasion he didn't have nightmares.
But, back in the present, he'd never get the chance to expand on his latest vague comment to her. Instead, the Tardis jerked them off to the side. None of them went tumbling, all latching on with an ease that only came with practice in riding in his unpredictable (but lovely) machine.
"What's happening?" Rose asked, as Anna held on and the Doctor piloted with a greater pizzazz.
"Don't know," he answered her. "No, but that's... not possible," he said.
"What- woah," Anna piped in.
"We're getting pulled off course, hang on."
/
When they stepped off of the Tardis, he looked around and immediately noted that there was museum cases all around them.
"So what is it? What's wrong?"
"Don't know," he said, absently. "Some kind of signal drawing the Tardis off course."
The conversation progressed, and some part of him noticed that the Anna who normally had a thousand comments about where they'd landed was suspiciously absent. In her place was a woman who was completely silent.
That was, until they got to the cyberman head.
"Hey, Doctor," she said.
"Yeah," he said, absently, quietly.
"Pick a number, one or two."
He frowned, looking back at her, his hand hovering over the case. "What for?" he asked. "Hang about, what's that look for?"
She had this faux amused look on her face, but beneath it was an almost... terror that she was trying so hard to conceal.
She gave a weird laugh at that before she shook her head, flapping her hand at that.
"Never mind that," she said. "Just answer the question, one or two?"
A strange thing happened, then. Something in him lit up, and everything in him told him to pick number two.
But, everything in his time sense told him to pick number one.
He turned more towards her. "Are you trying to break time again?" he asked, searching her.
"What? No!" she said, looking genuinely affronted. "Look, just, one-"
"One," he answered.
The weirdest thing happened, then. Something in his chest broke, and he rubbed at it before he turned back to the case, placing his hand on it.
She started to curse right before alarm bells went off.
Not a second later, armed guards surrounded them.
Past her fear, Rose still managed to make a comment. "If someone's collecting aliens, that makes you exhibit A."
He raised an eyebrow in a, 'really' gesture, but Rose couldn't really be blamed. Having guns pointed at anyone usually made them terrified.
Even if Anna's terror was still for whatever was yet to happen? For some reason?
He didn't know.
/
He was quick to find out.
He was also quick to find out how much of a moron he was when explaining the War and how he was the last, how Van Statten stopped looking at him like a person but a thing to be dissected and he hadn't even realized until he'd said the words out loud.
"But you don't want him, though," Anna said.
That spark of fear was replaced with a spark of protectiveness. This had obviously happened, though whether to her or in her television show, he didn't know; he'd already seen how far she was willing to go to protect the occupants of his dimension. He wasn't about to be the reason she suffered.
"An-"
She held her hand up as she took a step towards Van Statten, who looked appropriately disinterested in the woman who had tagged along.
"I'm going to give you a choice, Van Statten," she told him. "You can either take us back down to the Cage, or what happens next will be on you."
A look sparked through his eyes. One that the Doctor didn't like.
"You think I don't want him... because I should want you, instead? What are you, a time... lady?" he guessed, and the Doctor's hackles raised.
"She's nothing, she's no one," the Doctor quickly shot out. "Except that she's right. Bring us back down there and let me finish what I started-"
Van Statten was like a viper. He reached out- or rather, his claw snapped out to grab Anna's jaw, pulling her face to him as he examined her. She barely batted an eye.
The Doctor started for them, out of instinct, but even his time lord senses weren't quick enough in the confined space to put it past the soldiers, who immediately reached out and grabbed him by the arms.
"Don't you touch-"
"Hush."
He did what he rarely did; let some of his anger bleed through. He tried to make himself appear as the most daunting thing in the room, a threat not to be toyed with.
Van Statten wasn't half the genius he thought he was. He didn't even bat an eye at the display.
"Lock him up," he said, bored. "When we're done with her, we'll examine him next."
"Anna, don't-" he told her.
She had this habit, he'd noticed, of not saving herself. She'd said something about needing there to be a sacrifice for the pig. But, knowing what he knew about her psychology, he knew that it was more than that. Some part of Anna didn't think that she deserved to be saved.
Which was why every single fiber of his being rejected this idea that she was about to be examined, denying verbally that she was a time lady and demanding they examine him first to prove it (like that was going to work) and trying to throw himself at the soldiers.
He fought all the way up until the moment that they tasered him into oblivion.
/
"True or false," he ordered her, and she sucked in a breath, leaning back against the table.
"False," she said, in a small voice.
He laughed, but it wasn't funny. "Which part, Anna?" he asked. "Which part of it was false? The fact that you changed my personal future, or the fact that you did so knowing that you risked my traveling with Rose at all?"
She came back gasping for air, before she felt another round of electricity shooting through her and she was forced back to the confusing vision.
"I knew that the Tardis would still find her," she told him, and he searched her, astounded, before he turned away from her, rubbing a hand down his face. "I knew that she would still want her to travel with you, and it was even better because you weren't burdened by what you had thought you'd done-"
"You don't get to make that decision, Anna!" he shouted at her, turning back to look at her. "You don't get to-to decide what's better or what's worse for people, you are not a god!"
She gasped in another breath. Confusing, she heard in the background the ninth Doctor's voice, despite the fact that she was sure she'd been terrified in front of Pinstripes not moments before.
"You're going to kill her!" he shouted, sounding desperate and afraid.
Who? She thought. Rose?
Another shot of electricity went through her, pulling her back under.
"Bloody hell, Anna. Do you really think that I would've been okay with this if I'd have known that I might lose Rose in the process?"
"No," she told him, quietly. "But I'm telling you now that I knew that the Tardis-"
"Did you see it?" he asked her. She bit her lip, but she shook her head. "Did you have a feeling about it?"
"I was sure-"
She curled in on herself when he started to yell at her.
"Did you have a feeling about it?"
"No," she started, before she let out a breath. "No," she repeated. "But I knew the Tardis well enough-"
"Stop it."
"I knew the Tardis well enough-"
"Seriously, Anna, I mean it, stop it."
He threw her a look, and that might not have been enough, but that combined with the fact that there was still a maelstrom of emotions printed across his face and, oh yeah, she was still tied down, she did as he said, not speaking.
Then, he said two words that changed everything.
"Undo it."
She barely had a second to come up for air, surprise and terror pulling her up, before she was pulled down, down, down-
"Change it," he told her, simply. "Undo it, turn it back to the way that it was, and then I never want to see your face again."
She felt a mixture of shock and fear race through her. It was a good thing she was tied down because her legs were useless right now.
"Doctor, I can't," she said, quietly.
"Oh, don't give me that," he said, starting to pace. "You said so yourself, remember, back at the carnival? You asked if I wanted you to undo it, well, I'm telling you now that I do." He stood in front of her with his hands in his pockets, tall, sure, and terrifying. "Undo it. Change it. Put it back the way that it was meant to be."
She barely bit her lip, before she shook her head. "I can't," she told him. "I don't-I don't have the energy for it, or I swear, I would, I'm sorry, I'm not-I'm not trying to be difficult, I just-I can't."
He raised his eyebrows disinterested, searching her.
"Yeah, there is that, isn't there?" he asked her. "You, not having enough energy to even defend yourself."
He searched her for a long moment before he came to a conclusion.
"Right then," he said, and he walked over to her. With the way that she was feeling, it wasn't any wonder that she turned her face into the table, fully expecting him to beat her into submission. "Oh, relax," he mocked her. "I'm only untying you so that I can drop you off so that you can get your energy back before you undo what you did. Then, you can run back home to your original dimension, and we'll never see each other again. And, don't try anything clever like trying to get to the me in that timeline, cos, I'll tell you what, it's not clever. I can see everything that is, was, and ever could be, which means that I'll have seen this timeline and I'll know your face and I'll just send you right back where you came from." He finished undoing her straps before he stood up. She looked over at him, rubbing her wrists where the straps had rubbed against them. "Do you understand?"
She was shaking. Tears were forming in her eyes. Yet, she knew that he did not care about any of this. He only cared about one thing.
"Ye-yes," she said, having to clear her throat before she nodded. "Yes," she repeated, whispering the word.
He was completely cut off from her and completely disinterested in her, and he nodded.
"Good," he said. "Come on."
She didn't make the mistake of trying to reason with him or trying to beg him to not do this. Truth be told, she wasn't even sure that she was interested in that. She'd half expected him to say this exact thing when she first explained it to him. Now, he'd said it. It wasn't surprising, so she didn't act like it was.
In fact, she was rather numb as she walked into the console room. She walked past him to the gangway, keeping her head down as she stood at the doors, her entire body tense as she shook, rubbing at her wrists out of habit and trying desperately not to think about what had made the red marks encircling them.
When the Tardis landed, she didn't even pause, opening the door and walking out, not once looking back.
When she came to, this time, Anna came to screaming.
She only had a moment to see the ninth Doctor's face before the vision came back to her.
Except, it wasn't a vision. It was a memory. Some part of her knew that as deeply as she had known anything else.
"What-" she started, sucking in a desperate and ragged breath. The Doctor tried to shush her before he saw the look in her eyes. It was pure terror. "Oh god, what did I do?"
She passed out into oblivion.
It wasn't oblivion, though. Other memories started to filter through. Memories that she hadn't had before. She woke up after the angels had nearly destroyed her, to find herself on a future Tardis. Admitting to Ten that she was only 25 and not the 3000 he thought she was. The year they'd spent 'traveling' together (though it only qualified as sightseeing at best).
And then, Dalek.
She was trapped, then, between living memories she hadn't known she'd had, to waking up to a terror and anger soaked room. Part of it thought that it must be her fault, so she allowed herself to be dragged under.
Some far off part of herself had put it together the first moment that she'd come to. She'd gotten it. She'd understood.
It wasn't until she saw the same moment repeating, over and over again, that she truly understood what had happened.
"I'm only untying you so that I can drop you off... you can run back home to your original dimension... try anything clever like trying to get to the me in that timeline, cos, I'll tell you what- see everything that is, was, and ever could be- see this timeline and I'll know your face- send you right back where you came from-"
She woke up screaming.
"Woah, woah, Anna, Anna, it's okay!"
She fought half-heartedly against him before she looked into his eyes, searching him.
"What did I do?" she asked him, miserably, before she disappeared from him.
She was an idiot. She was a bloody freaking moron.
The angels didn't exist in the Turn Left timeline. They couldn't have done. What had happened must've been that she'd been so desperate to make things right that she'd subconsciously done exactly what he'd told her not to and traveled to a different timeline.
But, she was ever the glutton for punishment. Especially after everything that had happened between them? She still wanted to help a Doctor, but the Turn Left version of him... It wouldn't be anything more permanent than a few years.
She cried in her void space. It all made sense, didn't it, she thought? She could still help the Doctor and she wouldn't have to form an attachment. She felt grief flare through her when she realized that that was why she kept ending up the Turn Left timeline. Because she never wanted to be attached to another Doctor in the same way again.
She'd been so low on energy when she'd done it that it made sense for her brain to assign this to the angels, and, well... why would she want to remember a Doctor who had said this to her? Why not retain her lovely memories all the while? This wasn't tampering with her memories. This was very human trauma at play.
At that moment, she wanted the Sparkles Jack.
She wanted the Sparkles Jack more than she'd ever wanted a person in her entire life. Though their friendship had been short lived, she hadn't gotten as close to anybody as she'd gotten close to him, and in that moment, she wanted to be near him.
She had a thought, then, one that she'd never had before.
It wasn't just the Doctor whom had died in those versions of reality. The entirety of those realities had died, because they must, in order...
It filled her with an abject horror. Because all of those people were dead because she couldn't respect the wishes of one time lord.
She turned off to the side in her void space and she puked.
/
"But where did she go?"
"Do I look like I know the answer to that, Rose?" he asked her.
More like snapped.
It had been a long day, and Anna teleporting away just as he was finally able to heal her non-healing wounds had made this day even longer. He ran his hand over his hair before he looked back at Rose. She was looking at him uncertainly, though there was a brash response on her tongue, ready to be unleashed. Rose Tyler didn't take that kind of behavior. She'd made that very clear on the occasions he had snapped at her, out of frustration or anger.
But, after the day they'd both had, he thought she was making allowances. Especially because the Tardis had taken off before Adam'd had a chance to step onboard, and he wasn't correcting the notion that Rose thought he'd done that out of some kind of jealousy. Not that he'd admit that he was. He was busy, after all, dealing with an Anna who'd up and vanished.
Again.
She also had this habit of running off when she was hurt to tend to herself like a wounded animal hiding from potential dangers out in the wild, another habit he was well familiar with, even if he would more begrudgingly admit that.
He felt relief pouring through him when Anna appeared in front of him, saving himself from a potential argument with Rose when he turned back around to see her there.
She still looked worse for wear, though she was paler than before, new tears covering her face that she hadn't bothered to hide.
"Anna," he said, that relief and concern mixing in his voice.
"Rose, can you give us a minute?" she asked, meeting her eyes but not even giving the Doctor the courtesy of acknowledgement.
He glanced back at Rose to see the equally startled look on her face. "Yeah," she said. "Sure. Glad you're... okay," she said, rightfully doubtfully, the look shifting her whole face.
Anna didn't say anything, even as Rose flounced from the room. The Doctor turned to look back at her, his eyebrows raised expectantly.
"Well?"
"I, um..." Her whole face crumpled before she shook her head. "I messed up, I messed up, I'm so sorry, I messed up-"
"Woah, woah, Anna, hey, it's all right," he said. He'd already guessed that's what she'd meant by her choice of 'one' or 'two' earlier that day, and it was in no way her fault. Time needed that to happen, as much as he'd hated to admit it. That day had been atrocious, but at least the daleks weren't an issue anymore.
Look at that, he thought, bitterly. I win.
"No, it's not, it's not fucking all right, I messed up your life and then I, what, just-"
"Did that just fine on my own, thanks."
The biting remark left his mouth before he could stop it. After the day that he'd had, the reminders of what he'd lost, he didn't need Anna taking any blame for something she didn't do. Especially considering what it was that had happened today, and how that was, in no way, her fault.
Frustration so powerful that it filled the room overtook Anna. It was so much that, at first, he couldn't speak. In the next moment, she looked up at him, a set look on her face.
"No, you didn't," she said. A look crossed her face, blank rolling over it, and she looked down and to the left of herself. "I'm not doing this, I'm not- I won't, I won't do this this time around, I won't, I-"
For a single moment, she looked down and to the left of herself, before she looked up at him, determination in her eyes.
"Gallifrey stands."
He didn't even know how to process the words that she said. They literally would not process. He frowned, staring at her, a slight smile on his face.
"Sorry, what?" he asked, his Northern accent suddenly more pronounced.
"You and a few of your future selves- well, you the Warrior you, at any rate, put it into a pocket universe and-"
He'd never seen anybody shift as quickly as she did. Her entire face lost all remaining color and any remnant of a smile was chased from her face. She opened her mouth before she closed it.
"Oh, god," she said, for the second time that day, though it held none of the desperation it held before. "What did I do?"
For the second time that day, she disappeared.
It didn't matter. For the Doctor, time had stopped, had frozen around that single moment where she'd said those two incomprehensible words. He smiled, raising his eyebrows as he looked around. "Anna, what- Where'd you go? Anna?"
Time shifted. There was an almost tearing in his chest, but it wasn't painful except that he rubbed at the spot, it now being sore. He stared at the floor, trying to make sense of it.
There was an explosion of voices in his head in the next moment, and he dropped to his knees, putting his hand to his temple, crying out in surprise.
It didn't hurt, even though, by all rights, it should have. A connection that had been torn asunder should not have healed as quickly as it had been razed. But, in that moment, he'd never felt as whole as he did.
What had she done?
He didn't care.
There were two sides of himself, warring, because she'd saved them, but at what cost?
He couldn't process, he couldn't think. All that he knew was that Anna had saved them-
He'd been having the thoughts, but it didn't hit him for the longest five seconds of his life. Because Anna had saved them. She'd saved them.
This was obviously a dream. He was so obviously dreaming. He'd had this dream, in fact, just the other night, that Anna had come to him and pulled him by his hand, leading him to Gallifrey through the Tardis doors before she'd happily declared that she'd saved them all.
He was just dreaming.
Then why wasn't he waking up? Why wasn't Anna here, telling him that he was about to wake up? Where was she?
Where was Anna?
As if she could hear her name, she appeared in front of him moments later.
"I don't understand."
Because he didn't. He didn't understand anything that had happened in the last five seconds. He was dreaming. He was dreaming, but he didn't seem to be waking up. Had he died? That would explain the warm feeling in the back of his mind, the fact that he could feel his people where he hadn't been able to before, he had been dreaming, he was- he was dreaming, that's all that this was, and he was... He was...
He looked down. "I don't understand," he said, as if that would make a difference.
She kneeled down next to him, searching him. "I saved them," she said, quietly. "Put them in an alternate dimension where they could live out the rest of their days. You can never see them but they're alive, Doctor."
His hands were shaking, and he once again felt like a young terrified boy. He looked up at Anna. "I can hear them. I can feel them."
The words were disjointed, the sentences not making sense, especially because Anna seemed to be searching him, staring at him in confusion.
"What?"
"I can... feel them, Anna, what did you do?"
He was finally able to find a semblance of himself, clutching his hands into repeated fists. He felt as if he could feel his hands once more, even as his hands grasped uselessly at nothing.
"I didn't... know you would be able to... I saved them," she told him.
"How?"
She explained how she saved Gallifrey and put it into an alternate dimension, for the Gallifreyan's to live out the rest of their days. Yes, there would be him being the only Time Lord in this dimension to contend with but-
"Anna, they're alive."
His hearts were beating so fast in his chest that he would normally worry about a hearts attack, but he knew that wasn't likely to happen, not a day as wonderful and beautiful as today, because they were alive, they were alive and whole and it was everything.
"Oh, you beautiful-!"
He reached out, pulling her in for a hug. He didn't know how but they were both on their feet in the next moment, him twirling her in a hug before he set her back down.
"They're alive!" he shouted.
He didn't know how it happened, couldn't really remember it. In the next moment, he found himself kissing her.
Everything was hazy. It was all just a sense of good feeling and good vibes and-
"Oh."
And the sound of Rose stumbling into the medbay as he pulled away from Anna.
"Sor- sorry, didn't mean to- heard the shouting, thought-"
"They're alive!" he shouted, and he quickly danced over to her, grabbing Rose by the shoulders. "They survived, Rose, they..."
He frowned, looking down, before he looked over at Anna.
"They did, right? They did, they really did?"
Anna cleared her throat before she nodded. "Yeah," she agreed. "Yeah, they really did."
The next hours or days were a blur (though his time sense told him two measly minutes passed). He vaguely remembered falling back against the console before he desperately reached out for the feeling of them and instead of finding a yowling blackness he'd come to flinch away from, he found himself quickly embraced by the feeling of it, the telepathy and the knowledge that they were alive and whole and okay.
"They're alive," he remembered mumbling sometime later. "They're alive, what did you do?"
A flash of blonde entered his peripheral, the word 'shock' passing between the two, before he felt Anna's hands on either of his shoulders before she nodded, and explained it in small words.
"Can I see them?"
It seemed to dampen some of the good mood that had been created, and his mind couldn't put together why, his hazy mind, he could see his friends and his family and his children- goodness, his children, his children were alive, they were alive and okay-
"No," she told him, simply.
He raised his eyebrows but he didn't feel a disappointment, not in the least. "Oh," he said. "But they're alive?"
"They're alive," she agreed.
"They're alive," he said, nodding as he looked down at his hands. "They're alive. They're-"
They're alive.
It finally, finally clicked in his mind.
Emotion spilled from him, in waves and waves. He saw Anna flinch and no part of him could wonder why because he was drawing her into his arms in the next moment, crushing her in a hug that she was more than happy to return.
Besides the fact that this was a miracle, plain and simple, the shock had set in because the connection in his mind, whilst not painful, had still been slammed back into place. It was akin to slamming a knee into concrete, sudden and unexpected.
But Anna had saved them. She'd saved them. Even if he'd never be able to see them again, she'd done what he hadn't been able to. Better yet, she'd put them in an alternate dimension, where they could be free from the War and hopefully shed the ideals that the War had saddled them with, the one that had made it so that there was nothing left to save, and using the Moment had been his only option.
He shuddered at the memory of how far they'd been willing to go to win a War they'd already so clearly lost... Before he shoved the memory from his mind as far as he could, pulling back from Anna as he looked up at her, grinning a grin from ear to ear.
"Come on," he said, her hands in his, his mind finally clearing up enough to think straight.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"Everywhere," he promised her, and he meant it.