A/N: Hey, guys. In the next day or so, be looking for a new story that I'm going to be posting. It is an alternate chapter to the meeting between the Wolf and John and the Doctor and Rose that took place earlier in this story. However, I did not actually write it. It was written by pjcrazy with my full knowledge, consent, and input over the past few months, and it is good. Be sure to check it out when it's posted and let them know what you think, because they have been working hard on it! Thanks!

The Stuff of Legend

There wasn't really much for the Wolf to look at to distract herself as she descended into the pit, so she kept up a steady stream of conversation with Ida, trying not to think about what kind of mischief John might be getting up to on the planet's surface. She was also avoiding thinking about what she had seen inside his mind, which made talking the much simpler option. "You get representations of the Horned Beast right across the universe," she told Ida, "in the myths and legends of a million worlds. Earth, Draconia, Velconsadine, Daemos." She looked at the cliff face, trying to discern the symbols with her not very powerful head lamps. "The carving on the wall. It's the same image, over and over again. Maybe that idea came from somewhere, bleeding through. The thought at the back of every sentient mind."

"Emanating from here?" Ida asked.

"Could be," the Wolf allowed. She'd heard stranger versions of myth.

"But if this is the original, does that make it real?" Ida wanted to know. "Does that make it the actual devil, though?"

The Wolf shrugged before remembering Ida couldn't see her. "Well, if that's what you want to believe. Maybe that's what the devils is, in the end. An idea." She jerked to a halt, dangling in mid-air. Or mid-vacuum, more appropriately.

"That's it. That's all we've got," Ida told her. "You getting any sort of readout?"

The Wolf checked her scanner for the tenth time, but it still came out negative. For all intents and purposes, there was nothing around her. Not even the stone cliff she could clearly see. "Nothing," she confirmed. "Could be miles to go, yet. Or," she pondered, "could be thirty feet. No way of telling. I could survive thirty feet," she mused. John would drop her down the pit, kill her, or both when he saw her again, but the initial drop she could survive. Maybe.

"Oh, no you don't," Ida said firmly. "I'm pulling you back up." She reversed the drum, beginning the ascension, but the Wolf quickly disabled the controls. "What're you doing?" the scientist demanded.

"You bring me back, then we're both just going to sit there and run out of air. I've got to go down," the Wolf tried to convince her.

"But you can't," Ida protested. "Wolf, you can't."

"Call it an act of faith."

There was a pause, then, "I don't want to die on my own," was Ida's quiet reply.

The Wolf hesitated. "I know." She began to undo the carabiners holding the cable around herself. She thought of something. "I didn't ask before. Have you got any sort of faith?"

"Not really," Ida answered in the negative. "I was brought up Neo Classic Congregational, because of my mum. She was. My old mum. But no, I never believed."

The Wolf nodded, considering. "Neo Classics, have they got a devil?" she asked curiously.

"No, not as such. Just erm, the things that men do."

"Usually the same thing in the end," the Wolf muttered.

"What about you?" Ida asked.

The Wolf shook her head. "I believe, I believe I haven't seen everything, I don't know." She thought about everything the Beast had said to them that day. What it had claimed to know, where and when it said it came from. It had to be preposterous. And yet, "It's funny, isn't it?" she said almost to herself. "The things you make up. The rules. If that thing had said it came from beyond the universe, I'd believe it, but before the universe? Impossible. Doesn't fit my rule. Still, that's why I keep traveling. To be proven wrong," she admitted. The Wolf fiercely wanted to believe that there was something beyond her, but over nine hundred – really, she was nearing fifteen hundred – years of traveling without a scrap of evidence of some kind of higher power made that belief difficult. "Thank you Ida," she said kindly.

"Don't go!" Ida cried.

She paused, hand on the clip. There was one last thing she needed to say. "If they get back in touch – if you talk to John – just tell him. Tell him –" she couldn't do it. It was on the tip of her tongue but she just couldn't do it. "Oh, he knows." The Wolf allowed her thoughts to run past John one more time. If the fall killed her, she wanted the last thing she thought of to be him – the man that had saved her in so many ways. Sighing, she went to unclip herself when static crackled through her comms.

"Wolf, are you there?" John's voice made it through. "Wolf, Ida, can you hear me?"

"John?" the Wolf called, startled into taking her hand from the carabiner.

"Wolf!" John said ecstatically. "Where are you? Are you two okay?"

"I'd appreciate a bit more oxygen," Ida piped out.

"We're exploring the pit," the Wolf answered more fully.

There was a pregnant pause. "Wolf, please don't tell me that you decided to go rock climbing," John said dangerously.

"Someone had to, and I was the best option."

"Wolf, there is nothing good down there!" John yelled, surprising the Wolf with his vehemence. "Best case scenario, there's nothing. Worst case, some demon from hell that's been imprisoned for eons wants to eat your liver for revenge!"

The Wolf rolled her eyes at his melodramatics. "I highly doubt Satan ate liver, Johnny," she answered, managing to crack a smile. "But you're wrong. The TARDIS might be down there. I have to go down, even if there's just the slightest chance. Do you understand?"

"No! This one time, I do not understand!" John insisted. "Please, just go back up to Ida. We'll figure out a way to get to you and then we'll do what we said. We'll do like we said, yeah?" he was nearly begging. "A new life somewhere else."

John desperately waited for the Wolf's reply. But when it came, it was the last thing he wanted to hear. "I'm sorry, John." Then there was silence.

He frantically grabbed the radio. "Wolf? Wolf!" he cried into the microphone. "Wolf, please answer me!"

"She's gone," Ida murmured.

John's eyes narrowed in confusion. "What do you mean, 'She's gone'?"

"She fell. Went down into the pit. And we don't know how deep it is. Miles and miles and miles."

"But what do you mean she fell? She couldn't have fallen. I was just talking to her," John protested.

"She let go. I couldn't stop her." There was a hesitation. "Before you got back in contact, she said your name. Said you knew. Whatever that meant."

John froze, unable to move, hardly daring to breathe. The Wolf was gone. Had fallen to her death. No, she couldn't be gone. She wouldn't leave him like that. Zach gently took the microphone from his stiff fingers. "I'm sorry," he murmured before speaking into the radio. "Ida? There's no way of reaching you. No cable, no back up. You're ten miles down. We can't get there," he said apologetically.

"You should see this place, Zach," Ida told him. "It's beautiful. Well, I wanted to discover things, and here I am," she sighed.

"We've got to abandon the base. I'm declaring the mission unsafe. All we can do is make sure no one ever comes here again."

"But we'll never find out what it was." It wasn't really a protest, more of a lament.

"Maybe that's for the best," Zach said.

"Yeah."

"Officer Scott."

"It's alright," Ida sighed. "Just go. Good luck."

"And you. Danny, Toby, close down the feed links," Zach ordered. "Get the retrotropes online, then get to the rocket and strap yourselves in. Jefferson, go to the rocket and prepare for launch. We're leaving."

"Yes, sir." Jefferson took off.

John brought himself to attention. "I'm not going."

"John, there's space for you." The fact that the space in the rocket was because of deceased friends did not escape either of them.

John shook his head. "No, I'm going to wait for the Wolf. She waited for me, and I can't not do the same."

Zach looked at him with pity. "I'm sorry, but she's dead."

"You don't know her," John denied, casting around for some way to make Zach see. Didn't he see how brilliant she was? "Because she's not. I'm telling you, she's not. And even if she was, how could I leave her here on her own, all the way down there? She's been alone for so long. I can't leave her." He gathered himself. "No, I'm going to stay."

Zach sighed. "Then I apologize for this. Danny, Toby, secure him."

Danny and Toby grabbed John's arms, trying to hold him still. John struggled as Zach pulled out a syringe. He jerked one arm free and swung at Danny, laying him out on the ground. He tried to punch Toby next, who ducked, but began to lose his grip. John shoved him down. Zach tossed the syringe to Danny and got a hold of John around the shoulders. John thrust an elbow into his stomach, winding him, but Zach held on, keeping him in place even as John continued to violently try to throw him off. "No, no. No! No! No! Let me go!" John cried. "Get off me! I'm not leaving!"

"Do it!" Zach yelled at Danny, who fumbled with the needle before managing to inject John.

Zach held on as John swayed, unconsciousness taking over even as he tried to land one more hit to Zach's face. "No," he whispered one last time before his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he passed out.

Zach caught him before he could hit the ground. "I have lost too many people today," he told John quietly. "I am not leaving anyone else behind. Get him on board," he ordered the other two.

John woke up a while later, already strapped into his seat on the rocket. He vaguely heard Toby and Zach speaking to each other as he tried to remember what had happened. His eyes jerked open when he realized where he was. "Wait. We're not –"

"It's alright, John. We made it off," Danny tried to reassure him.

"I'm not going anywhere!" John denied. "Get me out of this thing! Get me out!" He pulled at the straps, but he couldn't get free.

"And lift off! Whoo!" Zach crowed.

John cast his eyes around the ship, looking for some means of escape. He had to get back to the surface. The Wolf was still down there, at the bottom of the pit. He spotted a possible help. He grabbed the bolt gun in front of him and aimed it at Zach, hands not even shaking. "Take me back to the planet," he ordered. "Take me back!"

"Or what?" Zach asked, watching him carefully.

"Or I'll shoot," John said grimly.

"Would you though, Doctor Smythe?" Jefferson asked. "After you saved us all back there? Would you really? Is that what your Wolf would want?"

John thought about it, then cursed to himself, slumping in his seat. He couldn't do it. "Sorry but it's too late anyway," Zach apologized. Take a look outside." The surface of the planet was already drawing away, the rocket unable to turn around. "We can't turn back. This is what the Wolf would have wanted. Isn't that right?"

"We were supposed to go together," John muttered too low for anyone else to hear.

The Wolf woke suddenly. She saw her broken faceplate and jerked to her feet, holding her breath. Realizing that she was still intact despite the compromised spacesuit, the Wolf tried an experimental inhale. The air was a bit stale, but breathable. "I'm breathing. Air cushion to support the fall," she hypothesized. "You can breathe down here, Ida." There was no response. "Can you hear me, Ida?"

The silence was broken by the roar of massive engines. They drew steadily away, the noise fading. "John had better be on that rocket," the Wolf muttered. She grabbed her flashlight, which had survived the fall as well, and shone it around, exploring her surroundings. The light landed on the walls, revealing a mural of paintings. A great horned beast with glowing red eyes was depicted, with white clothed figures surrounding it. "The history of some big battle," she worked out. "Man against Beast. I don't know if you're getting this, Ida. Hope so, otherwise I'm just talking to myself and that gets depressing after a while. Anyway, they defeated the Beast and imprisoned it."

The Wolf turned and saw two bronze urns sitting on separate pedestals, about ten feet apart. A great chasm lay just yards in front of them. She looked back at the wall and saw the same two urns painted near the end of the mural. "Oh, maybe that's the key." She touched one curiously, and they both lit up. The Wolf backed away. "Or the gate. Or the bars," she corrected.

An impossibly large, horned, creature lifted itself above the lip of the chasm to glare at her, the same red eyes in its head as shown on the wall. The Wolf startled violently at its appearance, but collected herself. It was chained to the wall by its horns and limbs – it wasn't going anywhere quite yet.

"Okay," she breathed, "I accept that you exist. I don't have to accept what you are, but you're physical existence? I'll give you that." The Wolf nodded, but quickly shook her head. "I don't understand. I was expected down here. I was given a safe landing and air. You need me for something. What for?" she asked it. "Have I got to, I don't know, beg an audience? Or is there a ritual? Some sort of incantation or summons or spell?" The Wolf shook her head. "All these things I don't believe in. Am I just supposed to start now?" There was no reply. "Speak to me! Tell me! Why won't you talk? Or – you can't talk," she realized. "Oh, hold on, wait a minute, just let me. Oh! No. Yes! No. Think it through. You spoke before. I heard your voice. An intelligent voice. No, more than that. Brilliant. It's like you said. We're alike. But, looking at you now, all I can see is Beast. The animal. Just the body. You're just the body, the physical form. What's happened to your mind, hmm? Where's it gone? Where's that intelligence?"

The Beast merely roared in anger, jerking at its chains fruitlessly, and it dawned on the Wolf. "Oh, no."

Toby started laughing delightedly. "What's the joke?" Danny asked, put out.

"Just, we made it," Toby replied. "We escaped. We actually did it."

"Not all of us," John muttered.

"We're not out of it yet," Zach warned. "We're still the first people in history to fly away from a black hole. Jefferson read me the stats."

"Gravity funnel holding, sir. We should have clear skies, as much as it can, anyway," Jefferson reported. "Stats at fifty-three. Funnel stable at sixty-six point five. Hull pressure constant. Smooth as we can, sir, all the way back home."

"Coordinates set for planet Earth," Toby gloated.

As the rocket continued on its path, John kept thinking about the Wolf, down there somewhere in that pit, with the Beast her only company. That got him wondering about the Beast. It had spent so much energy, taking over Toby, then the Ood, all in an effort to kill them, supposedly. He shook his head, trying to work out why it would suddenly decided to let them go. "It doesn't make sense," he realized.

"What, John?" Jefferson asked.

"We escaped. But there's a thousand ways it could have killed us. It could have ripped out the air, opened us to the black hole, burnt the station down around us, anything. But it let us go. Why?" It dawned on him. "Unless it wanted us to escape."

"Hey, John, do us a favor. Shut up," Toby snapped.

"Almost there," Jefferson reported. "We'll be beyond the reach of the black hole in forty – thirty-nine –"

"You were imprisoned, a long time ago. Before the universe, after, sideways, in between, doesn't matter," the Wolf worked it out. "The prison is perfect. It's absolute, it's eternal. Oh, yes! Open the prison, the gravity field collapses. This planet falls into the black hole! You escape, you die. Brilliant." A thought dimmed her excitement. "But that's just the body. The body is trapped, that's all. The devil is an idea. In all those civilizations just an idea. But an idea is hard to kill. An idea could escape. The mind. The mind of the great Beast. The mind can escape. Oh, but that's it!" she laughed. "You didn't give me air, your jailers did. They set this up all those eons ago. They need me alive, because if you're escaping, then I've got to stop you. If I destroy your prison, your body is destroyed. Your mind with it."

The Beast's body could do nothing more than growl. The Wolf hefted a rock to smash an urn, but a dark thought occurred to her, and she stepped back, dropping it back to the ground in defeat.

"But then you're clever enough to use this whole system against me," she murmured. "If I destroy this planet, I destroy the gravity field." She ran her hands through her hair, distressed. "The rocket. The rocket loses its protection and falls into the black hole. I sacrifice John."

The Wolf shook her head. Sacrifice John? After everything they'd been through together, this was how it ended? Her, at the bottom of a pit with what may very well be the actual devil, John stuck in a rocket attempting to escape, the TARDIS lost to them both, all of them falling into the black hole they orbited.

"So, that's the trap. Or the test, or the final judgment, I don't know. But if I kill you, I kill him," she said defeatedly. "Except that implies in this big grand scheme of Gods and Devils that he's just a victim. But he was never a victim. And I've seen a lot of this universe. I've seen fake gods and bad gods and demi-gods and would-be gods, and out of all that – out of that whole pantheon – if I believe in one thing. Just one thing. I believe in him," she snarled, picking up the rock again and smashing the urn.

The Beast screamed. The Wolf shattered the second urn.

"This is your freedom," she growled. "Free to die. You're going into that black hole and I'm riding with you."

The rocket began to buck and shudder underneath them. "What happened? What was that?" Danny asked, frightened.

"What's he doing? What is he doing?" Toby panicked.

"We've lost the funnel. Gravity collapse!" Jefferson yelled.

"What does that mean?" John asked over the din.

"We can't escape," Zach reported. "We're headed straight for the black hole!"

John looked out the window. Kroptor was falling, losing orbit. "It's the planet," he told Zach. "The planet's moving. It's falling." He looked to his left, just to see Toby staring at him, his face once more covered in the ancient symbols.

"I am the rage," he said in a voice other than Toby's.

"It's Toby!" John yelled. "The Beast is in him again!"

"I don't have any more ammunition!" Jefferson shouted.

"And the bile and the ferocity," Not-Toby continued. "I am the Prince and the Fall and the Enemy. I am the sin and the fear and the darkness."

"It's him, it's him, it's him!" Danny yelled in fear, trying to get away from him.

"Stay where you are!" Zach ordered him. "The ship's not stable!" Toby breathed out fire, accentuating that argument. "What is he? What the hell is he?!" Zach cried.

"I shall never die," Not-Toby gloated. "The thought of me is forever, in the bleeding hearts of men, in their vanity and obsession and lust."

John picked up his bolt gun from earlier.

"Nothing shall ever destroy me. Never!" it crowed.

"Go to hell," John growled, aiming at the viewing glass. He pulled the trigger, shooting out the front screen, then slammed Toby's seat belt open. The man was instantly drawn out into space, still roaring his fury.

"Emergency shield!" Zach cried. A metal shutter sealed the hole, but the rocket continued falling. "We've still lost the gravity funnel. We can't escape the black hole."

"But we stopped it," John told him. "That's what the Wolf would have done," he told Jefferson.

"Some victory," Jefferson scoffed. "We're going in."

"The planet's lost orbit," Danny told them, looking at it out the window. "It's falling!"

The force of the planet's descent shook it down to it's core, throwing the Wolf away from the chasm and into the shadows of the wall. She hit her back against something hard. Wincing, she looked up, and immediately started grinning, a joyful welcome sounding in her head.

It was the TARDIS.

Leaping to her feet, the Wolf rushed inside. She had only seconds. Seeming to understand, the TARDIS gave her no trouble in starting up and dematerializing. She landed next to the trapdoor of the pit, sprinting out and scooping up an unconscious Ida. The Wolf checked her mind as she moved her inside. Slight oxygen deprivation, but Ida would recover. She set the other woman down next to a coral pillar and prepared to dematerialize once more.

Extending the TARDIS' own protective shielding around the rocket now next to them, the Wolf towed the other ship away from the black hole's pull, halting once they were out of range. "Sorry about the hijack, Captain," she apologized cheerfully over the radio. "This is the good ship, TARDIS. Now, first thing's first. Have you got a Doctor John Smythe on board?"

"I'm here!" John called back, voice filled with relief. "Where are you?"

"I'm just towing you home. Gravity schmavity," the Wolf mocked. "My people practically invented black holes. Well, in fact, they did."

"The point, Wolf," John reminded.

"Right, yes. In a couple of minutes we'll all be nice and safe. Oh, and Captain? Can we do a swap?" the Wolf requested politely. "Say, if you give me John Smythe, I'll give you Ida Scott? How does that sound?"

"She's alive!" Zach said in disbelief.

"Yes! Thank God," Danny added.

"Yeah! Bit of oxygen starvation, but she should be alright." The Wolf sobered. "I couldn't save the Ood. I only had time for one trip. They went down with the planet. Ah!" she brightened again. "Entering clear space. End of the line. Mission closed."

John fidgeted impatiently as he waited for Zach and Jefferson to exit the TARDIS with Ida in tow. He had told them to go first, wanting them to make sure Ida was alright without him in the way or distracting them. He could have checked her out himself, but he was far too antsy. He wouldn't have done them any good. Plus the Wolf had said she was alright. They didn't need him.

"That's it?" Danny asked, staring at the innocuous blue box.

John stopped bouncing on the balls of his feet momentarily to answer. "Yep," he said with a grin.

"You two travel around the universe in a blue shed?"

"Oi! Don't knock it!" John reprimanded.

"It's just a bit small."

"And a bit brilliant!"

More than that.

"More than a bit," John corrected himself. Then he paused. The same voice he had been responding to for months, what he had assumed was his own subconscious, had started up again. He had gotten so used to it, he just took it and adapted it into his conversations. But what he had learned today – it wasn't him. It couldn't be him. A: it didn't sound like his voice. It was more – musical. Two: it didn't talk like him, or very much, generally.

Just then, Zach and Jefferson came out, driving all thought besides the Wolf from his head. "See ya, then," he told Danny. "Pleasure doing business with you," he said to Zach and Jefferson. "Give Ida my regards." With that, he grinned and sprinted into the TARDIS, closing the doors behind him and pausing for a moment.

There she was, adjusting some controls on the console, like today had never happened, except for the fact that she was still wearing a now battered spacesuit. Her helmet – with it's broken faceplate – sat on the jump chair. She looked up at the sound of the doors clicking shut, and smiled widely at him. The Wolf rounded the console as John ran up the ramp, sweeping her up into his arms. The Wolf's feet swung above the floor as John held on to her.

After a few moments, John set the Wolf down, placing a kiss on her forehead and one on her cheek before pulling her into another hug, his face pressed into her hair, his lips barely brushing her forehead once more as he breathed her in.

The Wolf was doing the same, her head resting against his shoulder, face against his suit jacket. She held him tight, seeming to be just as unready to let him go. Eventually, though, she pulled away, mumbling about getting out of the space suit. "You've still got your stuff on under there, yeah?" John asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"Just take it off here," he told her. "I'm not ready for you to not be in the same room as me."

The Wolf huffed. "Scandalous, John!" she scolded.

John smiled at the teasing. "You know what I meant," he told her.

She sobered. "I know. Me too. But, I need you to unzip me anyway."

He obeyed carefully, trying not to catch her hair as he undid the zipper holding the suit together at the back. The Wolf sighed in relief as she took the hot suit off, leaving her in her jeans and leather jacket once more. She went over to the console, switching on the radio. "Zach?" she called. "We'll be off, now. Have a good trip home. And the next time you get curious about something – oh, what's the point? You'll just go blundering in. The human race," she scoffed.

"You love us," John told her.

The Wolf looked up at him. "I do," she said seriously.

"But Wolf," Ida interrupted, apparently up and about once more, "what did you find down there? That creature, what was it?"

"I don't know," the Wolf replied honestly. "Never did decipher that writing. But that's good. Day I know everything? Might as well stop."

"What do you think it was, though, Wolf?" John asked her quietly.

"I think we beat it. That's good enough for me," she said firmly.

"It said I was fading. That I was going to be lost in battle," he reminded her.

"Then it lied." The Wolf turned back to the radio. "Right, onwards and upwards. Ida? See you again, maybe."

"I hope so."

"And thanks, guys!" John added.

"Hang on though, Wolf," Ida called them back. "You never really said. You two, who are you?"

"Oh." The Wolf winked at John. "The stuff of legend."