This one took way to long on account of the fact that I had to re-watch most of series 1 to get the feel right. Also I had some technical issues but they're all solved now! Read this chapter carefully and you might get a surprise!

Songs for this chapter: UNIT and Rose Defeats the Daleks (both from the Series 1 and 2 soundtrack)

The Bad Wolf and the Oncoming Storm

Captain Jack Harkness addressed the crowd on floor 0.

"The daleks are coming. This station is all that stands in their way." He said flatly, holding his automatic casually. "I need volunteers. Has anyone here ever fired a gun before?"

The room broke into quiet murmurings, most of which did not sound encouraging. Convincing people to fight was going to take time. Time they didn't have.

A voice from the back of the crowd spoke. "I have." The statement was quiet, flat and calm but it drew the attention of the entire room.

Jack watched with interest as a scrawny teenager pushed her way forward through the crowd to approach him. He looked her up and down carefully. Usually Jack was not a judgmental person, quite the opposite in fact. But he was about to send people to their deaths protecting the Doctor and Rose. He'd prefer that those people actually had a fighting chance.

She looked barely capable of lifting a gun let alone firing it.

"Are you sure you can?" He asked, trying to be respectful but discouraging all the same.

She looked him in the eye. "I was a soldier." She said simply.

He considered the young woman again. "Really?"

Before he could react, she snatched the automatic from his hand and had it upright and in her own. She flipped the weapon over, detaching the empty cartridge as she did so. Before the spent cartridge even hit the floor she had whipped a fresh one from Jack's pocket and had it loaded, primed and aimed at his heart. Silence descended except for a few spare shells clinking to the floor. Jack stared at her expressionless face. She was a solider alright: it was in her posture, her eyes, her cold detachment from any sort of pleasure or happy thought while holding a weapon. She was prepared to kill him if she had too.

"Okay. You keep that one…" He said after a few seconds of stunned silence, gesturing to the gun. The girl blinked and her icy soldiers' demeanor melted slightly. She lowered the weapon and strapped it over her shoulder with a nod. She began plucking cartridges from the crate next to him as calmly and with the same self-assurance as if she had been picking fruit.

"I'll go scope out the perimeter." She said as she shoved three spare cartridges into her belt, which looked like it had been designed specifically for such a purpose. She adjusted the strap to let the gun sit comfortably across her back. "What floor do we start on?"

Jack raised his eyebrows but said nothing about her impressive tactical reasoning. "494 and up." He replied. She nodded again and crossed to the open lift. "Were you a strategist by any chance?" Jack called after her.

The soldier turned to face him. "No." She replied, pushing the lift button. "Special task force foot soldier." The lift door closed.

Jack whistled softly as the crowd broke into confusion again. "I have got to start hanging around the army again…"

When the lift reached floor 494, the doors slid open and the soldier stepped calmly out. It was deserted and dark, the silence clinging heavily to the shadows. She pulled out the pen and aimed it at the computer panel. The lights slowly sprang to life, illuminating the high ceilings and the sign at the far end that loudly proclaimed the owner of this entire operation: Bad Wolf Corporation.

The woman looked up at the sign with a slight catch of her breath in her throat.

"It's here too…"

A familiar sound drifted down from the floor above her: a grinding, wheezing, repetitive sound like something ancient and powerful drawing breath after breath. She drew a sharp intake of breath as something deep inside her stirred at the noise. Her pulse pounded heavily in her throat as the consciousness touched her own. She tucked the pen away and swung the gun around into carrying position. Her blood was beginning to boil with battle fervor. She knew the reason for this happiness. She'd finally done it.

She'd found them.

The Doctor let the sonic fall to his side as the box disappeared. Rose's frantic calls faded into the mists of time.

…He held her securely in his arms again. "It feels like I haven't seen you in years." Rose told him as she hugged him tightly.

"I told you I'd come and get you."

She smiled at him with so much trust, so much pleasure at seeing him again that his left heartbeat briefly matched the rhythm of his right. "I never doubted you…"

…He smiled. "Never even occurred to you did it?" That was his Rose, always thinking the best of him.

"Well," She said, still stripping wires for him. "I'm just too good."…

…The realization that they would not make it out alive. They would all have to die, or the daleks would win…

…He pulled her close and planted a firm, slightly lingering kiss on her forehead. The last time he would ever touch her… ever feel her so close…

He tried to smile but failed pathetically. She was safe. He clung to that fact as he turned away from the empty room and resumed his work on the delta ray.

He was already missing her. Not having her in the room but knowing she was still alive was almost worse than when he had feared her dead. But she's safe now. He reminded himself. She'll be safe. She would live out her life, probably marry Mickey and die of natural causes at an old age for a human. Vainly, he tried to look back, to see her life in the swirling mists of time. Still nothing. Even while she was separated from him forever, he still could not see her life.

He scooped up the wires she had been stripping barely a minute before and started to connect them to the converter. The silence of the station was deafening. Like the universe had stopped turning.

He was stuck now. It was strange; staying still for too long had always terrified him. That was part of why he had stolen a TARDIS and run away all those years ago.

He had always feared what would happen if he grew attached to a place, if he knew people for too long. Eventually, something always happened to them. Everyone who had grown close to him had eventually left. As he knew they would. So he avoided prolonged stays. Never more than a few days in one place if he could help it.

But he felt none of that now. No, knowing that the TARDIS was out of dangerous hands, knowing that Rose was safe, he was content. Content to face his fate and die if he had too.

Jack's voice crackled over the intercom calling for Rose's help. He ignored it as best he could, a strange stinging sensation in his throat.

"She's not here." He finally said, when he couldn't stand to hear Jack calling for her anymore.

"Well how much time does it take to leak? When she gets back tell her to read me the codes."

"She's not coming back." He said in an emotionless voice.

"What do you mean, where'd she go?"

He hesitated for a fraction of a second. "Just get on with your work."

"You took her home didn't you?" The captain said, without a hint of surprise or anger.

"Yeah." He said bluntly, daring Jack to say something else about Rose.

Jack got the hint. "The delta wave…" he began, like he feared the answer "is it ever going to be ready?"

"TELL HIM THE TRUTH, DOCTOR." The dalek emperor interrupted before he could shoot another vague, blunt response to the captain. He paused, sonic in hand as the god spoke from the screen. "THERE IS EVERY POSSIBILITY THE DELTA WAVE COULD BE COMPLETE… BUT NO POSSIBILITY OF REFINING IT." Well so much for secrets. "THE DELTA WAVE MUST KILL EVERY LIVING THING IN ITS PATH WITH NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN HUMAN AND DALEK. ALL THINGS WILL DIE. BY YOUR HAND."

"Doctor…" he turned back to Jack's image on the com. "The range of this transmitter covers the entire Earth." He said nothing. What could he say?

"YOU WOULD DESTROY DALEKS AND HUMANS TOGETHER." The emperor stated in what could pass for triumph if it wasn't coming from a dalek. "IF I AM GOD, THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS THEN WHAT DOES THAT MAKE YOU DOCTOR?"

"There are colonies out there." He protested, desperate to defend himself. "The human race would survive in some shape or form but you're the only daleks in existence. The whole universe is in danger if I let you live." He wasn't exterminating the humans. He was only massacring them. Not much better, but not as final.

He looked at Jack again. The captain's face was a mask of hard neutrality. "D'you see Jack?" Jack said nothing. He could see the horror in his eyes. The betrayal and judgment. "That's the decision I've gotta make for every living thing. Die as a human or live as a dalek." He hoped Jack could pick up on the remorse in his voice. He didn't want this. But it had to be done. Jack still said nothing. "What would you do?" He asked Jack.

Jack was silent for a moment. "You sent her home… she's safe." He stated, like it was the most important thing right now. "Keep working." He commanded roughly.

"BUT HE WILL EXTERMINATE YOU!" The emperor cried.

Jack's face broke into a smile. "Never doubted him, never will."

He smiled, his battle fervor returning. Good old Jack. Loyal to the end. He stood and approached the screen. "Now you tell me, god of all daleks, cause there's one thing I never worked out." The last question on his mind. Something he'd been dying to ask since he'd seen the words.

"The words BAD WOLF, spread across time and space, everywhere, drawing me in. How'd you manage that?"

"I DID NOTHING!" The diety proclaimed.

He smirked. "Oh come on, there's no secrets now your worship."

"THEY ARE NOT PART OF MY DESIGN." The emperor stated flatly. He stared, somehow believing its words. "THIS IS THE TRUTH OF GOD."

He stared up at the words. They loomed in the darkness, half-hiding in the shadows like they were stalking him, trying to stare him down. If it hadn't been the daleks, who had left those words? What could possibly have had the power and the ability to scatter them across time and space, exactly where he was going to see them? His hearts hammered in his chest. What was BAD WOLF?

He felt Jack die. But there was no time to mourn. He yanked the switch up. "It's ready!" He couldn't believe he'd finished it this quickly. Just in time actually. As he looked up, the daleks were slowly entering the room from all sides, surrounding him.

"You really want to think about this." He commented to the emperor, trying to stifle his growing fear. "Cause if I activate the signal, every living creature dies."

"I AM IMMORTAL." The dalek emperor declared confidently.

"D'you want to put that to the test?" He taunted.

"I WANT TO SEE YOU BECOME LIKE ME. HAIL THE DOCTOR, THE GREAT EXTERMINATOR!"

His hands were quite suddenly gripping the switch. "I'LL DO IT!" He shouted, rage and fear coursing through him in a bitter mixture.

"THEN PROVE YOURSELF DOCTOR. WHAT ARE YOU? COWARD OR KILLER?"

He tightened his grip on the switch. He had to do this, it would end it all. He was going to do this… Rose brushed her blonde hair from her eyes, giggling with glee as they walked arm in arm through a snowy Cardiff… Her eyes filled with such pity, such compassion as he told her of the Time War and what it had cost… "I could save the world but lose you…" She stared at him for so long, almost as if she couldn't quite comprehend what those words meant and why he was saying them to her… She cried into his shoulder as they mourned the death of Peter Tyler… His throat tightened, he drew a gasping breath. …"Such hard work." Jack teased, grinning widely… Jack tossed him a banana with a suggestive smile. "Thought you might appreciate that Doctor. Shall I make it a banana martini?"… Rose and Jack pulled him into a joint hug, the warmth of companionship filling the control room and warming both his hearts… Rose looked at him with those trusting eyes. She knew this man. He was a good, kind, brave, wonderful man and she trusted him with all her human heart.

His fingers went limp and slid off the switch. "Coward." He decided. "Any day."

There was a moment of triumphant silence from the emperor. "MANKIND WILL BE HARVESTED BECAUSE OF YOUR WEAKNESS!" It finally said, sounded disgusted and jubilant all at once.

"And what about me?" He asked. "Am I becoming one of your angels?"

The dalek emperor fixed him with its sickly eye. "YOU ARE THE HEATHEN. YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"

He accepted his fate. "Maybe it's time."

He closed his eyes, waiting for their strike. So this was it. The end of the Time War. The daleks would win, the Earth would perish, the Time Lords would be extinct.

He removed himself from this place, put himself back in the TARDIS a week ago. Rose had been laughing, Jack clapping him on the back at some joke. And he had smiled. He blocked out everything about the scene around him: the bleak walls, the silence of the massacred station, the daleks aiming for his hearts. He couldn't even face his own death. Coward to the end.

He could hear the TARDIS again, wheezing and breathing as she took him and Rose and Jack on to new adventures. Was this Time Lord afterlife? It had to be, it sounded so real, so close…

The shout of a dalek broke through his mental blockade. "ALERT! TARDIS MATERIALIZING!"

His eyes flew open. He wasn't hearing things… it was actually here.

He spun around just as the box fully appeared, in the exact spot he had made it disappear from only minutes before. Had it returned for him? What was that light in the windows…?

"YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE!" The dalek god cried but he was too busy trying to figure out why there was suddenly singing in his head. Singing that was so familiar…

The doors burst open with a torrent of golden light. He shielded his eyes as the full power of time and space crashed against them. When the initial wave subsided, he risked a peak over his hands. What he saw both took his breath away and made both his hearts stop in fear.

It was Rose, standing in the full onslaught of the light. Absorbing it. Being it.

She took a step forward and vanished into the light, entering the time vortex as easily as the TARDIS itself did.

He stumbled backwards as every Time Lord instinct in his body screamed at him to drop, to run. But he couldn't… it was Rose. Rose was back. Rose was in danger.

She materialized standing over him. Her eyes were distant and calm. Deep within them, the telltale vortex of time turned.

"What've you done?" He cried.

"I looked into the TARDIS…" Rose said in a voice that was definitely not her own. "…and the TARDIS looked into me."

Of course. She had opened the heart. He didn't even want to think about what she'd had to do to force that open. "You looked into the time vortex Rose, no one's meant to see that!" He told her. She only looked at him, scrutinizing him with those far away eyes, like she could see everything at once but only cared about seeing him. No, it must have just been the overwhelming sense of time in her head.

The voice of the Emperor boomed from the wall screen. "THIS IS THE ABOMINATION!"

"EXTERMINATE!" He turned around in time to see the lead dalek fire. The ray shot out, straight at the golden goddess but she merely raised a hand, the power of time flaring in her eyes and blocked the shot with an open hand. The ray abruptly ceased and the daleks stood, dumbfounded. Their unstoppable weapon had been rendered useless.

"I am the BAD WOLF." He turned back to Rose. "I create myself." His hearts plummeted as the realization dawned on him. It all made sense. Time wasn't a line. The only reason they were here now was because they were here right now. Rose raised her eyes to the logo high on the wall. "I take the words…" She raised one hand and made a slow brushing motion. "I scatter them. In time and space." Following her movement, the letters of BAD WOLF separated themselves and drifted away into oblivion. "A message to lead myself here."

This power, the power to send things through time and space, to control action and thought. All the power of the Goddess was in her hands. She was going to die. "Rose you've got to stop this," He pleaded. "You've got to stop this now!" He didn't care about the dalek army on the loose. He didn't care about the Earth below, about his own life. Not while she was in danger.

Rose didn't move. It was as if she couldn't hear him. The vortex burned in her eyes stronger than ever. Soon it would consume her entirely. "You've got the entire vortex running through your head! You're gonna burn!" How she was not burning already was a complete mystery to him but one he was thankful for nonetheless.

She glanced down at him at those words, the light vanishing from her eyes. "I want you safe." He stared into her brown eyes, everything else forgotten. Because the universe had just ceased to exist. "My Doctor." She uttered the words like a prayer, tears glistening in her eyes. Like she had wanted to say them forever. Rose, not the creature she had become. Rose was saying this to him. Both his hearts had stopped beating. His mind had stopped functioning properly. Rose was keeping him safe, prepared to do anything to save him. No concern for herself just the desire to get him out alive and unharmed. "Protected from the false god." Rose said, a single delicate tear running down her cheek.

"YOU CANNOT HURT ME." The voice from the wall boomed. "I AM IMMORTAL!" Rose's gaze finally broke his own and she looked at the Emperor for the first time. Her whole body seemed to clench. Abruptly the power was back. He recoiled from its potency as the BAD WOLF spoke again. "You are tiny. I can see the whole of time and space. Every single atom of your existence and I divide them." The vortex flared in her eyes again, turning them into liquid gold as she raised one hand towards the army. He felt the dalek immediately in front of her, the one who had tried to shoot her, crumble slowly into golden dust and disappear. He found himself unable to look away from her as she glowed with the power. "Everything must come to dust." The BAD WOLF said quietly, another tear running down her cheek. "All things…" She raised both hands. "Everything dies." She said in a voice that trembled with wisdom and sorrow. He finally broke from his stupor and looked around in awe as the entire army began to disintegrate into dust. Dalek after dalek fell before her without as much as a whimper. In a few seconds, the room was empty except for her and himself.

"The Time War ends." The BAD WOLF declared.

The emperor spoke. "I WILL NOT DIE…" But it was dying. He could feel it. The potency of time rippled out from her like a wave, everything dalek gently rendered to dust in its path. He trembled. Nothing could stop the judgment of the Goddess. "I CANNOT. DIIIIEEEEEE…" His protest was cut off as his entire ship melted into atoms. Every dalek was gone, he could feel nothing of their presence but Rose still stood there, arms thrown out at her sides, churning with the power of the universe.

"Rose," he said carefully knowing just how delicate her control was "you've done it now stop."

Her muscles clenched but the fire did not leave her eyes. She had unleashed a force she could not control. The power was consuming her, wanting its freedom.

"Just let go." He commanded her desperately. He couldn't lose her, not like this.

"How can I let go of this?" She sounded liberated, transcendent. "I bring life…" Down the corridor, Jack inhaled sharply as life returned to his body.

"But this is wrong!" He yelled. She had to stop. This wasn't his Rose. She wasn't like this. "You can't control life and death!"

"But I can." She turned to look at him again. Only him. Rose was speaking. But the fire of time still burned in her eyes. She was still frozen in position. "The sun and the moon, the day and night…" She declared, like she could feel them turning in her mind. Another tear slipped down her cheek. "But why do they hurt?" She asked, her voice breaking.

It was starting. She'd be torn apart. "The power's gonna kill you and it's my fault!" He looked away, every muscle in his body clenching in agony. It was all his fault… he'd done this. His throat tightened with tears. He'd killed her.

"I can see everything…" Rose whispered but the pathetic sound pierced straight through both his hearts. He looked up. She was trembling, begging him to make it stop, to make the pain go away. "…All that is…" He'd stopped breathing. "…All that was…" Could she..? "All that ever could be."

He stood, looking her in the eyes. "That's what I see. All the time. And doesn't it drive you mad?"

She tried to nod but couldn't move. "My head…" she choked out in the voice of the BAD WOLF.

A deep calm had settled over him. "Come here." He commanded tenderly. He could save her. They were the same.

She was shaking quite visibly now, her eyes swimming in fear and pain. "… is killin' me!"

He smiled. That was his Rose. Gently, he took her hands. "I think you need a Doctor…"

He stepped forward, gently tugging her closer. She turned to him, crying in full now, begging him to come, to help, to do this thing to her that he'd been preventing himself from doing for the longest time.

He stared into her eyes, the eyes he had come to know so well, the eyes that had peered into his soul and put it back together again. The eyes that had saved him. How he loved those eyes.

He leaned forward and captured her lips with his own.

As their lips met several things happened. First, he registered just how soft her lips were, how precious and gentle and sweet like her namesake, how good, how right they felt pressing back against his own. Second, he realized that this was what he had wanted for the longest time, practically since the day he'd met her. To share this kind of bond with her. It was as if he'd been carrying an enormous weight on his hearts, his mind and his body all at once without realizing it and as soon as his lips had touched hers, they'd all vanished. Like they'd never existed.

Third, the flow of power between their closed eyes began, burning into his skull the omnipotence of time, flooding his veins with the knowledge and power of the greatest force in the universe.

Fourth (and most beautiful of all): he heard her. Her mind poured into his own as no one else's had. Her thoughts touched his and immediately joined his consciousness. She shouted his name in his own head. She wanted him closer. She never wanted him to let go. She wanted exactly what he wanted. He smiled into the kiss.

He itched to pull her into his embrace, to crush her against him and hold her there. They were one. He would be tied to her for the rest of his existence. The Bad Wolf and the Oncoming Storm.

Reluctantly, he tenderly pulled away and broke the connection. His eyes opened to hers. The last few fragments of the time vortex burned between them: connecting blue to brown.

For one precious, wonderful second, she stared into his eyes. For that one precious, wonderful second, she saw him as all he was. His arms were there to catch her before she fell. He cradled her softly against his chest, just below his first heart, taking a second to remember this moment, to know that this was everything he'd been fighting for all this time. To have her safe in his arms.

The fighting was over.

Softly he lowered her to the floor.

Then he rose, eyes glowing like the twin suns of Gallifrey. He could feel it, all that power. The raw pulsating energy that was time itself. It filled him, consumed him and swirled within his mind, filling the emptiness that had been there since the Time War. He could keep this. He could be invincible. He could be a god.

Never again would he feel anything but the turn of the universe, the flow of time. He could create and destroy at will. Chose what lived and what died. Rewrite the past, present and future.

He took a deep breath.

And he let it go.