This story has been rewritten. Please see chapter 1 for details.

Chapter 15

"Blasted alarms!" He silenced the cloister bell with a press of a button. "Yelling at me isn't going to stop me." In less than ten minutes her dimension cannon would be charged and she'd be gone. He couldn't allow it.

A low rumble shook the chamber. The ghostly image of his previous control room flashed around him as if super-imposed over an old photo. Wisps of stonework and high ceilings inlaid with filigree faded into industrial tubes and wires.

"Come on, come on, come on," he said as the ship rocked. A formless black shadow appeared beside him but vanished a second later. "No, don't do that." He twisted a knob and banged the gravatic anomalizer. "Can't you see I'm shorting out the time differential on purpose?"

The TARDIS groaned, metal joints and structures creaking under the strain. Wasn't just his past self fighting him; his TARDIS was fighting too, even time itself, but he wasn't willing to lose, not if the cost was her.

White marble replaced the grated floors for half a second, then phased out. He cursed.

Even if he was successful, going with her was only half the battle. He still had to win her over, and what redeeming qualities did he have that could compare to that Doctor of hers?

Not one.

It didn't have to be that way. Why not make everything right—stop himself after the academy, force himself to choose a different path? He could erase Victor from the equation entirely, even save Gallifrey. He could be every bit the man the Doctor was and more if he just went back a little further …

Though the alarms had stopped, a new warning blared in his head. His hands stalled at the controls. This was type of sin the high council granted the death penalty for.

So? No council left to condemn him now. Time was his to command and his alone.

"What on Earth?" Rose barreled in, her arms out as if to steady herself. She gawked at the specter-like surroundings. "What's happened? What's going on?"

He gritted his teeth and set the timeline back further. Another jolt.

"Oh, my gosh. You're doing it, aren't you?" she asked. "You're trying to cross your own timeline."

He bashed the anomalizer back into place with a mallet. "I can do it. I know I can."

Rose rushed forward. "Stop! You're gonna blow a hole in the space-time continuum."

He twisted the gyroscope of the gravatic stablizer and tried again. The entire metal chamber reverberated with a bang as the main doors jolted free of the latch. "He was wrong," he muttered to himself. "I can fix this. I can fix everything."

"Who was wrong? What are you talking about?"

No sense in keeping it secret any longer. "Rose, there's something you should know. The Doctor, we spoke."

"You what?" Her eyes flew as wide as her mouth, then her dark brows slanted into a scowl. "When? How? Why didn't you let me talk to him?"

He fought the urge to cringe. "You were asleep, and I didn't tell you because I couldn't let myself believe what he had to say—that I had to let you go or risk disrupting fixed events." He shook his head. "I won't let him take you from me."

"What, am I some game to you now?" she shouted above the noise. "Is winning so ruddy important?"

"It's so much more than that, Rose. Don't you see? I can rewrite my own story. Victor need never have existed. I can be better for you, for everyone I've ever hurt."

"But I cared for Victor. He's made you into what you are. You can't take the easy way out. Not now." She reached out and touched his sleeve. "Earlier you said you wanted to heal the universe. That was a Doctor speaking. You're not Victor anymore. Please don't do this."

His fingers twitched on the throttle. "I can't lose you."

Tears leaked down her cheek and pooled at her chin. "If you do this, you will." Though her voice cracked, her face was as rigid as stone.

"Rose …" This wasn't how it was supposed to go. She couldn't—not now. They were so close.

He glanced at his hand still clasped around the lever, then looked at the destruction around him. Frayed conduits swayed from the ceiling, shards of glass riddled the muddy floor, the lab below a jumbled heap. Was it really just hours ago he swore to protect the universe? Now look at him, just as much a threat as the darkness itself.

He pried his fingers from the bar. "I—I didn't mean … Oh, Rose." She pulled him into a tight hug and he wrapped his arms around her. "I just wanted to be the man you deserve," he said into her ear.

"And now you are." She pulled back just enough to look at him. "'Cause it takes a great man to give up that kind of power. I've always known it was in you. I know you think I was projecting, but I don't see through you. I saw inside you, remember? Everything that you were and are, and you've come further than anyone I've ever known, just as I knew you could."

His vision blurred. Warmth flared in his core and chased down his limbs. Everything about this woman was impossible, from her very existence to her irrational faith in him. He wanted so bad to believe her.

A wave of nausea slammed into him. He sagged into her as cold sweat trickled down his neck.

"What's wrong?" Rose asked as she struggled to hold up his weight.

The lingering smell of leather nearly undid him. "T—time is wrong. Everything's snapping, timestreams and eddies. It's like …" He tried to steady himself but doubled over as another wave sent the world spinning.

The heavy gong of the cloister bell once more filled the dome. Instinct drew his gaze up to the open doors and he nearly lost his balance. The night sky was mangled. Streams of light where stars had been were knotted in the sky like some horrific special effect, as though everything had been smeared and stirred together. All the sweat on him froze.

Rose followed his gaze and clapped a hand to her mouth. "That's not the darkness."

He stumbled past her toward the console. A new warning flashed on the screen. "No."

"What is it?" Rose asked.

He grabbed the monitor. "The darkness had already fractured the universe when I shorted out the time differential. The force of both must have been too much. Everything it's … it's shattering, Rose. Remember when I said we had days before the darkness consumed everything?"

She nodded but a new fear lurked in her eyes.

"Now that the universe is collapsing, we have minutes."

Not even proper seconds ticked by as he stared at the flashing glyph. He could feel it, the disconnect between the illusion of time sustained by the TARDIS and the rest of the universe as it crumpled in agony. Time was dead. He'd destroyed it like everything else he managed to touch—every life that ever was or would be now lost to the chaos, and with them, his chance with Rose.

A new wave of sick that had nothing to do with his time sense threatened to force its way up, along with something else. He gritted his teeth and fought the bizarre urge to laugh.

"Are you alright?" Rose asked.

Surely there was humor to be found in it all—the irony that a Time Lord could fall victim to the old self-fulfilling prophecy trap. Reverse causality at its finest. He dropped his gaze and found he was still clenching the monitor, knuckles white and veins bulging.

A tremor shook the controls. Wires clanged against the time column, but it was the other Doctor's words which rang like a shot in his ears: You can't change it. Not without catastrophic repercussions.

Catastrophic. Repercussions.

"Please," said Rose. "You're scaring me."

And the part that he found most tragic was not that everything was breaking apart around him, but that he extinguished his chance with Rose the moment he tried his mad scheme. By trying to avoid the future, he'd secured it.

As a result, that made things simple. Very very simple.

A weight rested on his arm. "What do we do?" Rose asked.

Without meeting her gaze, he stepped around her and grabbed the dimension cannon off the floor. "You've got to go without me," he said as he strapped it to her belt.

"I can't leave you here, not now. Why can't we split the dialectic gas between the two devices? It won't get us all the way back to my universe, but it'll tide us over until we can make more."

He dusted off her jacket and feigned a matter-of-fact tone. "If we spit the gas between us we won't have enough power to punch through the walls of reality. At best, we'll land in the middle of nothing. At worse, we'll scatter ourselves into atoms upon reentry."

"Is there no other way?" she asked so softly he was forced to look at her.

His insides pinched at her pained expression. "Only one thing can save us now." He grasped her shoulders. "Your departure will trigger a complete reboot. You've got to go on and stop this thing from erasing world after world. You can save us all. Your family needs you. He needs you."

"I need you," she whispered.

He ground his teeth with the effort of maintaining a neutral expression. "But you don't, Rose. You never did. I was the one who needed you. You helped me and made me better. Now you're meant to move on."

The cannon clattered to the floor. "Don't say that."

"You told me that sometimes we have to do what's best for those we care about, even if that means we can't be with them anymore." He molded his hand to the curve of her cheek. "I think finally understand that now—"

"Don't." Her eyes misted over.

—"and if I go with you I could never fix everything I've broken, all the lives I've wrecked across the centuries. I have to stay and be a Doctor, be the man you deserve even if I can't have you."

Something in her watery eyes shifted. She pushed herself up on her toes and captured his lips with her own.

She tasted of lip balm, tangy with a hint of mint, so delicious he'd never get enough. Everything coiled inside him unleashed and he kissed her back, hard. She responded in kind, all roaming hands and trailing fingernails, first in his scalp, then down his back and up again. Each spot she touched ignited his sensory synapses and sent him further into frenzy, more desperate to cling to her warmth. And if this was their final moment together he'd make it a memory to last.

He backed her into the dash and she let out a soft whimper into his mouth. A low groan rumbled deep in his chest, but a beeping beneath them tore them apart.

Rose nudged the glowing cannon with her shoe. "It's ready."

"You should go," he said, still clutching her waist, but the words sounded distant and small.

"Yeah," she said with matching enthusiasm.

He rested his forehead against hers. "Rose, what I called you in the dining hall that day, you were never that to me, not ever. I need you to know that."

"I know."

His eyes prickled. "I'm so s—"

She pressed her forefinger into his lips. "Shh. I don't regret one moment of our time together, and neither should you. Just promise you won't stop this way of living." He nodded into her hand. She let up just enough to trace the contour of his mouth, and a shudder ran through him. "Find someone," she said. "Better with two."

Another quake jostled the chamber. He gently rotated her forearm and kissed the vulnerable spot on her wrist, then leaned down and picked the dimension cannon off the floor. "It's time." He placed the cannon in her palm and curled her fingers over it. "Don't look back. He'll be waiting."

Rose sniffed and leaned in for one final kiss. It was different from the last, unrushed and deliberately delicate. She pulled away, her bottom lip retracting half a second later. "If things had been different …"

"I know."

Rose backed away, one step, then two. He balled his hands and held them in place down at his sides, the want inside stretched so taut it hurt.

She pressed her mobile phone to her ear. "Control? I need another jump. I'm coming home."

"Copy that, Agent Tyler. Good to hear from you. Locking onto your signature now."

Static filled the room as the cannon powered up. "Goodbye, my Doctor."

His chest pounded so hard, blood pulsed in his ears. "Rose Tyler, I …" But the words caught in his throat.

Tears slipped down her face. "I know," she said with a solemn nod. "I love you too."

An explosion of blue light forced his eyes shut as the roar of the cannon filled the air. He gasped as time streams and possibilities inflated around him like a popping in his head. Stars and asteroids flew past the doors in rewind, restoring to their natural places, everything sealing like a plug. Dimensional retroclosure; this point was fixed.

Rose Tyler was gone, and with her, all the warmth and light he had ever known.

He braced himself on the controls. No need to stay strong for appearance's sake now. He slammed a fist on the dash as a cry ripped from his throat, then slid to the floor and slumped against the time column.

Heartache—one final sensation gifted to him by her intervention.

Why couldn't he say it? Three measly little words … But she knew. Of course she did, that clever girl. And he won her heart in return, even if the price of that victory was sacrificing a future together.

Sending her into the arms of a better man was the best thing he could have given her in the end. Were they happy? Was it worth it? He'd never know, would he?

Only the faint hum of the engines broke the silence as he stared down the empty corridor. Now what?

He scoffed. It was obvious, wasn't it? He was destined to wander through space righting his wrongs with his head hung low. Piety would be his purgatory, a tailor-made hell just for him—if he managed not to relapse. It was so easy to promise her he'd do the right thing after she'd gone, but without her guidance …

The doors swung closed with a thud. Half a second later, the time rotor began to pump by itself.

"Oi!" he shouted as he banged the dash above his head. "I'm not just an accessory, you know. Ruddy ship with a mind of her own." He dragged himself to his feet and scanned the destination markers on the console. "London, 21st century?" he read aloud. "This your idea of rubbing it in?"

The rotor stopped and the doors creaked open, blinding light hitting him in the face. He slung his arm over his brow and gagged. By the darkest pit of Skaro, what was that unholy smell? He crept toward the sound of squabbling birds. A dumpster sat just a couple of yards ahead, the noonday sun beating down onto ripe trash bags that had overflowed onto neglected pavement. Two brick apartment buildings were sandwiched on either side of the TARDIS, a playground halfway visible through the narrow alley.

As he stopped just inside the doors, his chest constricted. In the center of the courtyard, a young blonde woman sat on a bench, chatting on a mobile phone. She let out a laugh—her whole upper body shaking in that telltale gesture.

Impossible.

He strained his eyes, peering at her from under his hand. It was her but it wasn't. This girl was still a round-faced teenage, her hair overly bleached, makeup too heavy, and so beautiful he could barely breathe. A familiar sensation prickled at his subconscious.

But that couldn't be. Rose was pans-dimensionally centric, unless … Could he have been wrong about everything?

Of course he was wrong. Rose didn't just land right in front of him on Starfall out of coincidence. Bad Wolf must have orchestrated all of this. In her omnipotence, she must have seen across all realities and possibilities and found him, the most fallen version of them all, and created Rose to set him on a new path.

If I could split myself in two to be with you I would.

The memory of her recent words sent hot tears down his face. Now she'd given him another guiding star, one more Rose Tyler for one more Doctor. He wasn't alone.

This girl hadn't the faintest idea as to what she was—how could she? But she would. Something anxious but resolved fluttered in his stomach as he took a step into the bright sunlight.

Rose had given him so much, and now she'd given hope. And that, like everything else she had given him, was priceless.

"Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time: effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end."
Germaine de Stael

Author's notes:

I want to thank everyone who made this story possible. My loyal beta Bria, my good friend sugarpoultry, and most importantly, all you readers. When I set out to write this story, I never thought I'd get so invested in it. It's literally changed my life. The feedback I've gotten has opened a new chapter, and given me the push to pursue writing. It's been so very rewarding for me.

It's my personal head canon that Bald Wolf created Rose Tyler (I create myself), and that she ended the Time War in that singular moment when she absorbed the Vortex. That she saved Gallifrey by becoming the Moment's consciousness, and resurrected Jack so he could tell the Doctor that he wasn't alone, that his planet was not gone when he needed to hear it most.

In my story, during that moment when she could see all that was and ever could be, she saw all possible outcomes, and found Victor. The rest you know.

Victor/Doctor, now has the duty of dancing around his own timeline to mitigate his effects on history. He'll be up against his greatest enemy-his past self, the ruthless Time Lord Victorious. But luckily for him, he has a plucky young human to keep him in line. Only question is, will he ever forgive himself enough to cross the line he's drawn between them?

The rest of the chapters are blank but I'll be leaving them in place to keep the reviews up.