AN: Okay. Wow. This chapter started out as two and a half pages in a notebook and then it exploded once I started typing. I did a bunch of research for this chapter and I know it's not going to make a whole lot of sense but bear with it. Although it wasn't covered by the show the Time War itself was actually explained rather interestingly through flashbacks in the comics, books and audio dramas in bits and pieces. I've also read some really good fanfics that did their own interesting spin on it all. Like Susan's War by Friendlyquark which you all should totally read because it's an amazing series. I got all of my information from the TARDISfiles which is like wikipedia on steroids for Whovians. I'm planning on collecting those books you mark my words, one day they shall be mine and it will finally all make sense! So when most of this chapter makes references to weird things, do what I did and look it up. It's really cool. I mostly did this chapter to help make sense of The Doctor and the mess he was in before, during and after the war. It'll also help me write out the next few chapters easier. I'll also be doing another flashback chapter about what happened after. I've already got parts of that written out so hopefully that'll be posted soon.

QueenPersephoneofHades: D'aaaaaw *hugs* I'm sorry I made you cry, but happy also. I guess that means I'm doing a good job?

Fogdragon23: Well, not bad for two and a half pages of chicken scratch if I do say so myself is it? Oh and you should totally update your fic so that I can read it.

This chapter feels a bit like a songfic but that's okay! I just think these lyrics fit a bit too well with what's going on. Iridescent by Linkin Park. And the last bit is a poem I found on Pininterest. I don't know who first wrote it but it is sheer genius. Genius I say!


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


You were standing in the wake of devastation
And you were waiting on the edge of the unknown
And with the cataclysm raining down
Insides crying "Save me now"
You were there, impossibly alone


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


The time before he had activated the Moment was a bit of a blur. He hadn't really known what to expect, hadn't really questioned what he was doing. He had been so tired and hearts-sick and injured in ways he no longer clearly understood and hadn't really cared to understand. He knew he'd regenerate soon, had considered just going ahead and finishing it while he could still think somewhat clearly. But it just wasn't worth it. Why begin again with something fresh and new when the same old horrors and terrors and cyclic patterns of time line collapse and renewal awaited him? It would be too much of a waste.

His memory was a mess, he knew instinctively that he was missing years, decades, centuries. Names and faces recorded in the TARDIS archive that he didn't remember. Empty bedrooms filled with the memories and lives of companions he couldn't picture. He was forgetting how old he was. That wasn't such a bad thing though. After he had cracked a millennium it just didn't seem worth it to keep track. Well he had for a little while. The last time he had counted he was a little over thirteen hundred years old. That was just before he lost Charley. She had given him a broken mug full of dirt and told him to pretend it was a cup cake. After losing so many loved ones, after so many years of war, it just didn't matter anymore after that how old he was. Too old. The ones he forgot. The ones that died. It all seemed to merge together.

Outside he looked perfectly fine and he felt perfectly fine most of the time. Or so he kept making himself believe. He was fine. He was fine. Survivor's Guilt? He was psychologically incapable of it. He could look his own reflection in the eye if he took the time to look. If he ever took the time to stop.

Manipulation had been the specialty of his seventh self. He could, would and had talked others into taking their own lives. He hated that trait, hated a lot of traits, but that one had to be one of the worst he could think of. He had quickly found out that the skills for manipulation hadn't died on that operating table with Seven like he'd hoped and were still very much alive. With the lack of others to manipulate to his will his mind turned to the task of manipulating himself. It was ridiculously easy and was probably a sign of his own senility. What started as a simple idea, a way to end the war totally and completely, had overtaken his entire concentration. Before he knew it he was in a dank and dirty prison, thin, filthy and more than half out of his mind. Repeating dates and coordinates and lists to himself to keep from really understanding what he was doing and why. Distracting himself from the fact that he had disappeared entirely, abandoning Gallifrey and the war and his responsibilities to look for an artifact that might not exist without telling anyone where he was going or why. Romana would definitely want to have words about that when he finally returned. One month of a lesser hell later and he had what he needed and a plan he hadn't really even realized was forming yet. So easy. An offhand comment to a fellow inmate about D-Mat guns and what they really did. A way to utterly exterminate the Daleks, the irony! Clay in his hands and his fellow cellmate was tricking the guards into letting them escape. As if it were his own idea. Clever, magnificent Chantir! And he hadn't even heard the rest of his theory! How one could make a D-Mat gun powerful enough to literally cut an entire solar system out of time and space if they were really clever. And he was really clever. Too clever.

Things had moved so fast from there and he hadn't even known Rassilon was awake much less Lord President before the order had come and he was sent away. All he knew was that things could only get worse. He had known it from the beginning. No chance for victory. He had done his best. Exxilon, Arcadia, Vulcan... All of them. He had led from the front because he couldn't bear to watch those under his command fall. Lord General, President Elect, Madame Romanadvoratnalundar's right hand and still a coward, still running and running and running away.

The Council would never have agreed to his plan. Rassilon would never have even considered it an option. The arrogance of the Time Lords would have doomed the universe.

All of Romana's hard work with the coalition, all of her plans for a Galactic Council, all of her hopes for keeping time and space safe with the help of other time sensitive races like them. All of it gone. Killed by Rassilon's races had joined, what alliances Gallifrey had made, vanished and took Romana's hard won sanity with it. All the things that had made Rassilon step down in the first place had come back with a vengeance and he spoke as if he were an Eternal with no rules to stop him. The strongest telepath of them all and suddenly the Doctor realized just where all those manipulative tendencies had come from.

Romana went through phases of love and hate for him so strong there were times he couldn't be in a room with her and feel safe but he did it anyway because the pain felt just as good and right as the tenderness. Her mind was a literal Pandora's Box and he often wondered if the Pandorica were real, if he could put Romana inside it and make the things living in her head go away. Stick Pandora back in Pandora's Box, that was a laugh. Maybe he could put Rassilon inside it and once the sick murmur of his voice was gone they could all think straight enough to get themselves out of this mess. Maybe he would ask Irving. Irving seemed to know a lot about artifacts that didn't exist. Of course if one were to point fingers Irving was a bigger renegade than he was. At least the Doctor only crossed his own timeline when he had to, Irving literally invited his past and future selves over for tea. And then stole all the silver to sell on the black market and blamed him for it.

The only good point he saw in his older brother was the tenderness and delicacy with which he handled Romana. He had always been her mentor and biggest supporter and she relied on him in ways the Doctor couldn't fathom. He appreciated that. Maybe when he returned he'd tell Irving that. Clear the air a little. It would be nice to have someone from his own bloodline to talk to again. Even if he had long ago realized that his bloodline held the biggest group of traitors and renegades this side of the Dead Zone.

After the war was over. He would regenerate and slaugh off the dark and bad things that murmured and screamed in the back of his head. Maybe he'd remember all the things he'd forgotten. Maybe his memory would stop failing. Maybe he'd stop feeling so old. Maybe he would go and ask Chantir if he'd fancy a trip to see the stars... He was a good Melmooth was Chantir... Maybe he'd retire for awhile. Put Lungbarrow back together. Convince Romana to maybe one day consider possibly being his mate. Get the family Looms going again. It would be nice to see children running the fields of Mount Perdition again...

He still mumbled these comforts and worries to himself, almost convincing himself this was the truth. Even as he pushed the lever down, putting all of his weight on it, and Gallifrey, the entire center of the Medusa Cascade, the totality of the Time War itself, vanished in a silent flash of light.


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


And in a burst of light that blinded every angel
As if the sky had blown the heavens into stars
You felt the gravity of tempered grace
Falling into empty space
No one there to catch you in their arms


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


The time after he activated the Moment was a bit more than a blur. He reeled as all of his senses were cut off. He could no longer smell the chemical make-up of Gallifrey, of his people. The unique flavor of his species that made him feel at home even when he tried so hard to escape. The thing he unconsciously yearned for when he was away. Even worse was the silence. No matter how far away he was, no matter how cut off, he could always hear the faint telepathic chatter of his race. If he concentrated he could pick out individual people. If he stretched he could feel the shape of their minds and it was never lonely, even when he was alone. The sudden absolute silence in his head as millions of minds were abruptly cut off was jarring and he almost didn't make it back to the TARDIS he was too busy screaming, just to fill that silence up.

The realization that he was on the wrong side of the Time Lock was like a Dalek's blaster to the heart. That in all of his manipulating and planning and guilt that twisted his stomach so that thinking about it made him violently sick, he had ended up manipulating himself into surviving. The war was in there and they needed him. He was Lord General, the straggling survivors of his army were still in there, waiting for him and he couldn't abandon them now. What was worse was that Susan, Leela, K-9 MK I and Romana were still trapped in that hell. His beautiful, brave, bright-eyed granddaughter who now looked as old as he felt and seemed to communicate on a different level than she ever had before, forcing her mind open to see the war in it's entirety like a Visionary minus the screaming psychosis. His sophisticated little savage who claimed to be kept young by the blood of her enemies but really it was just a clever bit of time line manipulation as the laws of the universe crumbled. His friend, leader, lover, guiding light and her silly tin dog. He reached for them. Stretched as hard as he could. He was right outside of where Gallifrey should have been, he should have been able to feel them, feel all of them. Nothing.

The TARDIS was screaming as the Eye of Harmony, the power source that kept all Gallifreyan technology running, died with the planet. She had a back up of energy from her own Eye but it would only last so long and even then parts of her were starting to fail. Like organs in a terminal patient.

He remembered calling for Romana. Trying to recall her scent and taste and the way she felt in his head. The way she felt in his arms. Her emotions and the scattered remnants of her thoughts as her mind constantly unraveled and healed. Her whispered obscenities and screamed endearments.

He remembered crying for Miranda, and Charley, and Molly, and Lucie, and Sarah, and Vicki, and Grace, andandand.

He remembered clutching that silly little picture Lucie had insisted on taking, the remnants of his ragtag family on Earth at Christmas. Before the first of the Time line collapses. When the Dalek-ruined husk of London 2194 still existed. Himself, sitting in the center. Lucie and Susan standing on either side. Susan was kissing his cheek and Lucie had her arm around his shoulders giving Susan rabbit ears. And Alex, the great-grandson that never was, standing between them. He often wondered if Alex had come with him would he still have existed? Would the TARDIS have protected him from the collapse that represented his parents never meeting? It didn't matter. A Dalek and three graves answered those questions and the number of Daleks he had tortured until they screamed for death didn't sooth the loss any. He would have asked Ace, but Ace was gone. Vanished before his mission to reclaim the Key and Romana only said, offhandedly, she had returned to Earth to check the timelines more closely. That she was safe for the moment. As if she had just popped out to fetch some milk and wasn't making the dangerous journey through an unstable vortex on half-completed technology she built herself with a half-grown TARDIS coral though Dalek ridden, Never-Were infested, Travesty injected space. His brave little Dorothy, flown over the rainbow on that detestably wonderful motorbike of hers.

He had thoughts of saving them. His family. His closest. The remaining survivors from the Houses of Lungbarrow, Oakdown and Heartshaven, he owed himself, the Master and Romana at least that much. Despite the fact that Lungbarrow was a hollowed out ruin and most of his cousins were dead or had disowned him, the Master's name had long since been struck from the Oakdown register and none of his family acknowledged his existence, and the only remaining members of Heartshaven were shrieking their lives away in the Visionary's Tower. He had thoughts of saving the bravest and brightest. He had thoughts of saving the children. The Time Tots who had just entered the Academy. He had thoughts of steeling a Loom and a copy of the Matrix and starting over. He had so many thoughts and each one unraveled half-formed as he thought them and he had been going on automatic at the end. There was no thought. The Moment had taken everything. His mind, his health, his hearts. There was nothing until the very end when a star that wasn't a star exploded into a supernova of unexistence and he realized that there was no going back. He was trapped on the wrong side, forced into wakefulness and realizing just what it was he had done.

This was worse than sculpting Ace's entire timeline into whatever he saw fit, without care for her wants and needs and watching her die over and over and over until she didn't know or care exactly where or who she was only that she was. This was worse than putting his hands around Peri's slender neck and squeezing until her lips were blue and walking away from her screams. This was worse than kidnapping his own granddaughter in the middle of the night and spiriting her away in a defunct old TARDIS in the middle of a scrapyard. This was worse than twisting all of time and space to get the desired result in what had become a massive game of tug-of-war between the Time Lords and the Daleks with the Universe caught squarely in the middle. He was worse than all of those because while all of that no longer existed, he still did. A Never-Were that Was.

He thought, sometimes, if they hated him for trapping them. Sometimes he thought they did, but once he thought it all he could see was Susan, tears permanently stained into her cheeks as she worked. Her strong telepathic abilities coming into play as she put screaming, broken minds back together. Her only link to sanity the ancient bond she had made with the Sense Sphere and it's constant song, backed by the TARDIS Mothertree, drowning every other thought in her head until all she heard was the symphony of the spheres and nothing else. Leela, her hair starting to gray despite all they had done to keep her young, leading terrified soldiers, no more than Academy students with weapons, into battle, shrieking dirges to drown out the Dalek voices. Her vocal cords had given out and any sound she made came with blood, but her mind, long since pulled open by her Gallifreyan husband and nurtured by the Cruciform, held a psychic roar that was so deafening it disrupted the Dalek's telepathic web. At least for a few precious seconds. K-9 had duplicated himself and dove into the Matrix, pulling out Time Lords from the Dark Times, begging for guidance. There was none. All advice came with the knowledge that there was nothing left to give. The duplicate vanished and no one knew where it went, but K-9 went out with Leela and recorded the names of every single soldier lost. The last time he had seen Romana her mind had been utterly broken. She would have agreed wholeheartedly with his plan. He had the feeling that she knew. At the end she had been more like the wailing Visionaries than a Time Lord. And then Irving had whisked her away and neglected to tell him where, no matter how many times he pleaded to just speak with her long enough to at least know she was alright.

He thought they would probably forgive him without thought and that just went on to make him feel worse.

He remembered the voice interface calling out protocol after protocol, autopilot struggling to maintain control without him. The TARDIS screaming inside his head for her pilot to do something. Anything. Not even their symbiotic bond could pull him into action. He remembered her calling as hard as she could for the only other TARDIS that could possibly still exist, somewhere out there in the stars. He remembered her crying for TARDIS Type-102, Compassion.

A Type-40 TARDIS didn't have the capacity to communicate in a way that a four or five dimensional being could understand. A Type-40 TARDIS could only communicate through Telepathic or Voice Interface with either the pilot or designated passengers. But then again a Type-40 TARDIS had never been known to swallow the culminative history of entire planets or keep a complete timeline alive while the rest of it splintered into tangents as Gallifrey exploded around her (because this far and away wasn't the first time he's committed genocide on his own race) or hold all of creation inside of her core or eat people or bend time and reality in ways even a Type-100 TARDIS never could. To hear her scream and cry in a near human voice should have been shocking. Should have been impossible. Should have never been. She was ripping and scrabbling at every single one of her timelines: past, present and future in an attempt to communicate on a level not heard or seen since the timeline of the Type-100's had collapsed.

Compassion, save your pilot! He needs you! Protocol 8-Delta-102 has been activated! Compassion, save him! Please, you must save him! Acknowledge directive: Protocol 8-Delta-102! Compassion, you promised! Laura, where are you?!

(Far away, far in the future, in the plughole at the end of the universe, a bedraggled woman in tattered blue petticoats with big, dark, all-seeing eyes, sat up abruptly in her cell. Her head tilted back until she was staring up at the darkness through the window. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she mumbled,

"Compassion, save your pilot..! Protocol 8-Delta-102 has been activated..! Acknowledge directive...! Compassion, you promised...! Laura, where are you...?" Her head snapped forward with a gasp and she lunged forward to grip the bars of her cage until her knuckles were white.

"Thief?!" She called, "Thief, is that you?!" When no answer was coming, Idris slumped down onto her skirts and began to cry.)

He remembered not caring even though he knew he should. He knew that if he was himself and not this blasted, wasted thing he would have been at the console in an instant comforting her. The only being in his life that hadn't abandoned him, he couldn't abandon her. Her wails would have broke his hearts. But not now. Not now. He just didn't have the energy to care. His TARDIS could no longer be classified as a Type-40 and as the last of her kind now she couldn't be classified as anything at all.

Compassion wouldn't come. Not for him, not for anybody. Compassion had run as far and as fast as she could, she needed no pilot nor wanted one. Not after what the Time Lords had tried to do to her, no matter that the TARDIS had swallowed that timeline whole just for her. She had given no promises he knew of and owed him absolutely nothing. Last he knew she had jumped universes and good for her. The Obverse had either been cut off or collapsed and without the Clockworks keeping the boundaries between the Multiverse in working order the doors between the tangents would close and she would be trapped, safe forever somewhere out there amongst the stars. The Stroppy Redhead, the TARDISLaura, trapped inside a Capsulecoffin and free to fly the vortex until the end of time itself.

Sparks were flying, the console room falling apart around them as the Block Transfer Computations fell apart, unable to keep together without power from the Eye and Logopolis had long since ceased to exist. The TARDIS was sending out distress messages to anyone who could help and he told her to stop. No one was coming. The only TARDIS left and if she blew she would take the solar system with her and that was fine by him. She could take out the whole galaxy and he wouldn't care, most of it was gone anyway, destroyed by Daleks and Time line collapse. They had stretched the universe so thin and knotted the skeins of time so well it would take hundreds of centuries to put everything right. The Eternals had abandoned them, their game was no match for the abomination taking place in front of them. The Celestial Intervention Agency had deserted, ascending to a higher plane and good riddance. They beat Rassilon at his own game and that was all that mattered. The Eternals and the Celesti could have what was left. Even the Shadow Proclamation could do nothing, they probably weren't even aware of what was going on yet. The loudly silent war that no one knew about because if they could perceive it then they too would be sucked into nothingness.

His mind was caving from the sheer madness of it all. The first convulsion of the universe had blown through like ripples in a pond. The remnants of Never-Weres obliterated along with planets that had no idea a war had even took place. The silence was replaced by the psychic cries of the dying and even they were cut off. The aftershocks replaced about half of them, altered still more and still the changes were more abominable than the destruction itself.

The platform the TARDIS had been standing on vanished because the race that built it ceased to be and they began to fall through space.

He stared at his hands and realized he was suffering from advanced stages of radiation sickness. He couldn't remember if that was from a Timeline obstruction or if he just hadn't cared to pay much attention to anything but the Moment.

The TARDIS was keening, a sound he had never heard her make before, and he wondered if he could just not regenerate and let it all end there.

He wondered if the Council had known from the start that it would all go wrong with them. The Deca. Ten students born within two decades of each other. Ten of Gallifrey's best and brightest, worst and darkest. Two Councilmen, two CIA operatives, a Toymaker, a Monk, a Doctor, a Scientist and a Madman. It was almost a joke. Theta Sigma, Ushas and Koschei walk into Prydon Academy. One goes mad, one goes cruel and one just runs away. But which went where? Who went mad? Which one ran? And which was the cruelest of them all? The answer? All. That was the answer. All of them. And wasn't that just the funniest joke? Funny like Koschei's incessant four beat rhythm that he tapped out on every surface until he had to sit on his hands or leave the room. Funny like Ushas' empty expression as she pulled the wings off of butterflies and watched them crawl helplessly around as she glued their pretty wings to transparencies for study. Funny like Theta Sigma running for hours and hours around the outside of the dorm tower at night until he made himself sick because insomnia and stress made him pull at his hair and pace until he couldn't stand it.

Funny like realizing that his own people had turned into the monsters they were fighting against and none of them were worth saving. Better to kill everyone, the good and the bad alike, than let that ugly abomination called Gallifrey live to see another day. Even thinking the word made him feel sick and he didn't think he could ever utter it again without gagging.

He was just in the process of blacking out when a strong, familiar set of hands lifted him up. A calm, calculated voice was giving calm, calculated orders. The TARDIS was settling, concentrating on that voice the same way she usually concentrated on him. He looked up into cold, cruel eyes like chips of black ice and a face he hoped to never, ever see again.

Then everything became slow and quiet. They stood together, like peering into a mirror in the black, each acknowledging the existence of the other the way one would acknowledge the existence of their own reflection.

"Did you ever imagine that it would come to this?" He asked. The figure, so regal in his black robes and skullcap, cocked his head to the side and gave him a crooked smile.

"No. Never." He answered, "But I'm ever so glad it did."

"Why?"

"Why not? Everything comes to dust and everything dies. Now I remain as I always have, the lone survivor. No. Not survivor. The winner. The Time Lord Victorious. "

"Are you going to take my remaining regenerations now?" He asked. He looked surprised, as if he hadn't expected the offer.

"Why should I? I have no use for them." He snorted.

"But I thought..."

"You thought what?" He asked, "That I was here to follow through with my plan? You and I both know, oh so well, that plans change. Besides the fact that you've done all my work for me so well and so completely. Better than even I could imagine."

"Then why are you here?!" The Doctor demanded, ignoring the fear he always held inside since the day he realized just who the Valeyard was. His other-self shrugged gracelessly.

"To remind you of who you are. To remind you that I am still here. No matter what may change the future you cannot get rid of me. That no matter how much love you hold for the universe and it's spoiled wonders it is only matched by my hatred of it."

"Then why..?"

"Why did I save you?" A warm chuckled and that familiar twinkle in his eye, that soft humor, all of it twisted and manipulated into something even the Master couldn't match in darkness and horror, "Really Doctor... Did you actually think someone would come to save you? Open your eyes."

He blinked. He was standing at the sparking ruin of his console, fingers automatically moving over the controls, re-routing, re-bypassing, recalibrating. He was utterly and completely alone.


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Do you feel cold and lost in desperation?
You build up hope, but failure's all you've known
Remember all the sadness and frustration
And let it go. Let it go.


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxx


1, 2, 3, 4 I declare a Time War
5, 6, 7, 8 The Daleks scream, "EXTERMINATE!"
9, 10, 11, 12 The Doctor died and Silence fell
12, 11, 10, 9 The Doctor will go back in time
8, 7, 6, 5 He will save so many lives
4, 3, 2, 1 Grab her hand and whisper, "Run!"

~Unknown