Thanks for the guest review! Please be aware that while I cherish questions, positive comments, and constructive criticism, I won't be taking suggestions except from my betas Sparky She-Demon and Nimbus Llewelyn, both of whom have been heavily involved in this story for a long time.

"Ancient Rome!" the Doctor announced with a flourish, swinging open the TARDIS doors. "Well, not for them, obviously."

He, Donna, and the Doctor exchanged grins, and Barry stepped away to look around as Donna fangirled, first about actually being in Rome, and then at the TARDIS' telepathic circuits. He thought back to his first trip, the utter shock and the wonder of being far in the future and hearing his native tongue. He turned to see Donna addressing a stall owner, curious about what would happen if she deliberately spoke in Latin while the circuits were active.

"Afternoon, sweetheart," the merchant smiled. "What can I get you, my love?"

"Er, veni, vidi, vici."

"Huh? Sorry?" he frowned, speaking in a loud, slow voice. "Me no speak Celtic. No can do, missy."

"Yeah."

"How's he mean, Celtic?" she asked the Doctor.

"Welsh," he shrugged. "You sound Welsh. There we are. Learnt something."

They wandered off through Rome, chatting, until they saw a single, large mountain towering above the city, a column of smoke billowing from the tip. The ground shook around them, and Barry staggered.

"Wait a minute," Donna breathed. "One mountain, with smoke. Which makes this…"

"Pompeii," the Doctor finished. "We're in Pompeii. And it's volcano day."


As if that wasn't enough, they also found out that the TARDIS had been sold off while their backs were turned. In another situation, the Doctor's face would've been hilarious.

"You don't seem too worried," Donna noted as they hurried (at normal speed) to Foss Street, where the merchant had directed them.

"Just another day with the Doctor," Barry sighed. "You get used to it."

"Fair enough," she shrugged. "Oh, wait! What about an amphitheater or something? Gather everyone together. Maybe they've got a great big bell or something we could ring. Have they invented bells yet?"

"What do you want a bell for?" the Doctor asked.

"To warn everyone. Start the evacuation."

"We can't, can we?" Barry asked, looking at the Doctor, who shook his head.

"Pompeii is a fixed point in history. What happens, happens. There's no stopping it."

"Donna, listen. I know you want to save people," Barry put in quietly, "but this time, we can't. Trust me. I've seen what happens when people meddle with fixed points. It's…not pretty."

He and the Doctor shared a long look.

"Listen, we can't just leave these people to die!"

"We have to, Donna," the Doctor told her. "Come on."

Reluctantly, she did.


They entered the villa they had been directed to just as another earthquake hit, and Barry dodged around at super-speed, making sure that nothing fell before slipping back into normal time.

"I'm afraid business is closed for the day," the elderly man who'd been identified to them as Caecilius said apologetically. "I'm expecting a visitor."

"But that's me, I'm a visitor," the Doctor waved. "Hello."

"Who are you?"

"I am…Spartacus," the Doctor said awkwardly.

"And so am I," Donna announced.

"Mister and Mrs. Spartacus," said the merchant, nodding.

Barry laughed. "They're, uh, brother and sister. My name's Bartholomew."

"How do you do?" Caecilius said politely. "I'm sorry, but I'm not open for trade."

A quick flash of the psychic paper solved that problem, and they quickly got the TARDIS back without any trouble, though Donna started agitating for the family to get out of town.

"Barry, tell her," the Doctor hissed as they made a show of greeting the household gods.

"I'm on her side, Doctor," Barry whispered. "Can't we just save one family?"

"You saw what happened when we saved your mom's life!" the Doctor shot back, and Barry winced. "And that was just one person."

Before either human could reply, they were cut off by the pompous entrance of the city's chief augur, Lucius Dextrus. He and the Doctor matched witty barbs for a while while Donna and Barry watched, before the Doctor's attention was drawn to a slab of marble engraved like a circuit board. Lucius claimed to have dreamt up the design himself, and Barry frowned. That would have been a huge coincidence, and he'd learned very early on in his time with the Doctor that there was no such thing.

Meanwhile, Caecillius' daughter, apparently a soothsayer as well, came in. Barry was no doctor, but he didn't need the smattering of medical knowledge he'd picked up from Martha and during his year on the run to know that "consuming the vapors" was definitely not giving the girl, Evelina, strength, a thought his friend shared aloud.

"Is that your opinion? As a Doctor?" she asked, and you could hear the capital letter.

"What?" he asked, eyes wide.

"Doctor. That's your name," she said, looking off into some middle distance.

"How did you know that?"

"And you," she continued, unhearing. "You call yourself Noble. And Allen. You come from so far away."

Lucius sneered, but when the Doctor challenged him, he responded by calling him "Man from Gallifrey."

"What?"

"The strangest of images. Your home is lost in fire, is it not? And strange companions as well. A daughter of London…and the chosen of the lightning."

"How do you know that?" Barry asked quietly.

"This is the gift of Pompeii. Every single oracle tells the truth."

"That's impossible," Donna began, but he ignored her and spoke again.

"Doctor, they are returning. As for you, daughter of London, there is something on your back."

"And you, Flash…beware your reverse," Evelina warned him, staggering forward, eyes unfocused.

"Flash?" Barry asked, but she ignored him, focused now upon the Doctor, advancing upon him as she spoke.

"Even the word 'Doctor' is false. Your real name is hidden. It burns in the stars, in the Cascade of Medusa herself. You are a Lord, sir. A Lord of Time."

And then her eyes rolled up in her head and she fainted. Barry lunged and grabbed her before she could hit the ground.

"Evelina!" her mother cried.

"Oh-kay," Barry said, looking up at the others. "That was weird, right? Wasn't just me?"


That evening, as Donna stayed with Evelina and gently questioned her, Barry, the Doctor, and Caecilius' son Quintus broke into Lucius' villa, and discovered half a dozen circuit boards in his house, each done by a different marble merchant. Lucius caught them, but the Doctor disarmed him-literally, in fact, since his arm had turned entirely to stone-before they escaped through the window. That was the good news. The bad news? They were being followed by something very big.

"Is it invisible?" Barry asked, glancing around.

"No, underground," the Doctor said, in that casual voice he only used when he was nervous. "Let's go."

Back at the villa, the Doctor and Barry yelled for everyone to get out, but as they were leaving, the hypocaust grill flipped through the air like a car in a sci-fi movie, and an immensely tall being of fire and stone rose through it.

"Water, we need water!" the Doctor yelled.

"I got it!" Barry called, and held out his arms, rotating them and creating a cyclone that whipped up the water from the central pool and sent it streaming into the creature. It staggered back, hissed, froze solid, and then crumbled to pieces.

"How…" Caecilius breathed, but the Doctor looked around, wide-eyed, for their other companion, who'd vanished in the fray.

"Never mind that, where's Donna?"

"This prattling voice will cease forever!" a Sybilline Priestess announced as she raised the sacrificial blade. Donna, gagged and bound to an altar, glared ferociously.

"Oh, that'll be the day," the Doctor commented as he leaned against the entrance.

"Hi," Barry waved from next to him.

"No man is allowed to enter the Temple of Sibyl!" she hissed.

"That's okay. Just us girls," the Doctor grinned.

"Yeah, what say we settle this like women?" Barry added. When everyone looked at him, he shrugged. "What? There are more of you than of us."

While he freed Donna, the Doctor babbled on about a brief fling he'd once had with the Sibyl.

"Is that how you spread her word, eh?" the Time Lord asked scathingly. "On the blade of a knife?"

Barry stepped towards his friend as a voice rang out-the voice of the the High Priestess, demanding to look upon them. But when the curtain was pulled away…

"Oh my God," Donna breathed. Barry guessed he shouldn't have been so surprised, given what had happened to Evelina's and Lucius' arms, but to see a living, breathing human being turned into stone…it was obscene.

"Who are you?"

"High Priestess of the Sibylline," the woman-or what had once been a woman—introduced herself, with the closest a stone woman could come to a "duh" expression.

"No, no, no, no. I'm talking to the creature inside you," the Doctor growled. "The thing that's seeding itself into a human body, in the dust, in the lungs, taking over the flesh and turning it into, what?"

Barry cast a quick glance around at the priestesses, who were on their knees, listening to the double voice coming from the High Priestess-one a normal woman's voice, the other sounding like a mountain would if it could talk.

"Name yourself!" the Doctor yelled, and oh, he was angry now. "Planet of origin. Galactic coordinates. Species designation according to the universal ratification of the Shadow Proclamation!"

"We are rising," she/it growled in the enigmatically ominous way of monsters across time and space.

"Tell! Me! Your name!" he bellowed.

"Pyrovile!"

"Pyrovile, Pyrovile, Pyrovile," the sisters chanted.

"What's a Pyrovile?" Donna asked.

"Well, that's a Pyrovile, growing inside her," the Doctor explained in the very, very calm voice he only used when he was absolutely furious.

"And that turns into the thing in the villa?" Barry asked, eyes narrowing.

"Exactly."

The Doctor produced a yellow plastic water pistol. "I warn you, I'm armed. Donna, Barry, get that grill open."

They hurried to do so, as the Pyrovile inside the Priestess explained how they'd landed centuries ago, only to be woken by the earthquake seventeen years before. That, according to Caecilius, was also when all of Pompeii's soothsayers had become accurate.

"Go on," Barry encouraged Donna, shoving aside speculations on psychic ability to be considered at a later time. "Right behind you."

"Down there?"

"Yes!" Barry hissed, as the Doctor asked why the sisters were unable to predict the volcano.

"Sisters, I see into his mind!" called their leader. "The weapon is harmless."

"Yeah, but it's gotta sting," the Doctor said, and squirted her. As the sisters rushed to their Priestess, Barry jumped into the hypocaust, followed by Donna and then the Doctor. As they went deeper, the Doctor spoke to them about fixed points in time.

"How many people died?" Donna asked.

"Stop it!"

"How many people died?" she repeated.

"20,000," the Doctor answered quietly.

"Is that what you can see, Doctor? All twenty thousand? And you think that's all right, do you?"

"Donna, think about it!" Barry snapped. "20,000 people live, Pompeii rises to overcome Rome, the entire course of European civilization gets thrown off-course! Maybe the barbarian tribes never get integrated into the greater empire, and the Renaissance never happens! Maybe Byzantium is never created, and the Ottoman empire takes over part or all of western Europe! Maybe the Pyroviles take over and boil the planet, or everyone turns into stone! Don't you think we've considered that? Consequences build on consequences build on consequences…"

"So that's it?" she asked more quietly, as the Doctor shot Barry an approving look. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?"

Barry winced. "Every life is important. Donna, please don't think I ever take this lightly. But…what choice do we have?"

A Pyrovile's roar interrupted any reply Donna would've given. In the half-light, her eyes looked damp, and Barry knew it wasn't just the heat that was making his own eyes water.

"They've spotted us," the Doctor said quietly. "C'mon."

Dodging and ducking, they made their way to the heart of the volcano, spotting a Pyrovile craft buried in the rock.

"Escape pod? Prison ship? Gene bank?" wondered the Doctor. Donna hypothesized that maybe they needed the volcano's eruption to launch themselves back into space, but the Doctor grimly told her that (as usual) it was even worse than that. Just then, Lucius appeared, clothed in his usual augur's robes and air of pompousness. As a Pyrovile reared up in front of them, the Doctor shot it with his water pistol.

"There is nowhere to run!" Lucius bellowed. "Not even for you, Flash."

"What's with this Flash business?" Barry muttered, and Donna shrugged at him.

"Now then, Lucius, my lord Pyrovilians!" the Doctor yelled back, interrupting her. "Don't get yourselves in a lava!"

"In a lather? No?" he asked Donna, who shook her head, and Barry, who rolled his eyes, but smiled as he did so. If the Doctor was making puns, the situation couldn't be too bad, he thought.

Barry's eyes narrowed when Lucius told them that Pyrovilia was lost. Hadn't Adipose 3 also been lost? And hadn't the Doctor told him about the Lost Moon of Poosh, too? He supposed it was a big old universe, but still…

"Water can boil!" Lucius boomed, having clearly eaten a big bowl of Fanatic-O's that morning. "AND EVERYTHING WILL BURN, DOCTOR!"

"Then the whole planet is at stake. That's all I needed to know. Thank you. Donna, Barry."

They ducked inside the ship, and the Doctor sonicked the door closed.
Inside, they found the completed marble circuit board, which the Doctor explained would take energy from the volcano to turn millions of people into stone-that was why the soothsayers couldn't foresee the eruption, because there would be no eruption. He could change it back, but…

"It's Pompeii or the world. If Pompeii is destroyed, it's not just history, it's not me. I make it happen," the Doctor breathed.

"No," said Barry quietly, "We make it happen."

Donna nodded, squeezing his arm. The Doctor shot them a small, sad smile, and got to work.

As prophets and soothsayers alike screamed, Mount Vesuvius erupted with the force of twenty-four nuclear bombs, and their tiny craft shot upwards, throwing them here and there, making Barry wish for TARDIS travel, before landing roughly on the slope below.

"It was an escape pod," the Doctor breathed.

"Really? Never would've guessed." Barry snarked.

"Get us out of here!"

The speedster nodded, wrapping his arms around both his friends. "Sorry about the clothes."

And they were gone.

Moving faster than the eye could see, Barry gritted his teeth, pushing through the immobile crowds and trying desperately not to look at their faces, those of the people he'd killed. The only mercy was that they moved too fast to hear the screams, too quickly to stop and notice the tears that mingled with ash on every face. They reappeared back in Caecilius' villa, and the Doctor strode into the TARDIS, ignoring his sparking trainers.

"You can't just leave them!" Donna yelled.

"Don't you think I've done enough?" the Doctor growled, and Barry hadn't heard him sound like this since the last time they'd fought the Daleks. "History's back on track, and everyone dies."

"But you've got to go back! Doctor, I am telling you, take this thing back!" she screamed. Then, more quietly, "It's not fair."

"No. It's not."

"But your own planet," she whispered. "It burned."

"That's just it. Don't you see, Donna? Can't you understand? If I could go back and save them, then I would. If I could save Barry's mom, then I would. But I can't. I can never go back. I can't. I just can't."

"Just someone. Please," Barry said, feeling like his stomach hurt.

"Not the whole town," Donna agreed. "Please. Just one family."

The Doctor gave them a long, long look, and slammed the lever down.

As ash and smoke rained down around the Caecilius family, they looked up to hear a wheezing, groaning noise, and the Doctor appeared out of thin air, backlit by white light. He stretched out a hand.

"Come with me."

They stood upon a cliff, watching the city burn below, and the Doctor promised that Pompeii would, one day, be remembered, and found again. Evelina, too, was free of the curse of foresight.

"Let's drop you off in Rome," Barry offered quietly. The Doctor shot him a sharp look, and he shrugged.

"Hey, better than leaving them out here, to walk God knows how far by themselves with nothing but the clothes on their backs."

The Doctor shrugged, frowned half-heartedly, then agreed.


"Thank you," Donna said, later.
"Yeah."
"Thank you," Barry told her, and she smiled. He shook her hand.
"Welcome aboard," the Doctor said, and sent them spinning off to their next destination.

Donna's compassion is one of her greatest strengths. But if you want to be a true hero, sometimes you can't afford to look at the little picture.

Since we already did Planet of the Ood back in Chapter 20, next up is a short story adapted from the Doctor Who Annual 2009, featuring the return of a certain baseball-bat loving ex-companion...