A/N - So, more added, as well as me merging some of "Gravity" back into this story for the sake of continuity. :)

Chapter 19 – Always the Women

The Doctor sat in his dog house and stared out at the floor. His mind was working, reaching out to the Archangel Network, cautiously and carefully insinuating himself into it. Making himself a part of it. It was the sort of thing he wasn't normally very good at. He hated being patient and working slowly. But, if he wanted to get in and not alert the Master to what he was doing, he had to be wary.

"Doctor," the Master called out, leaning down to look into the dog house. "How's it feel to be the mad dog now?" he asked with a bitterness that made the Doctor feel tired and sad. "You looked lonely. So, I thought I'd come and chat." The Master sat, cross legged, frowning like a petulant child and stared at him. "You know, Doctor, I was expecting you to be more fun than this."

"Sorry," the Doctor sighed out and looked at his oldest friend, feeling nothing but the grief of time passing, wasted and trickling away. In the back of his mind he had a hope. If he could get the Master to work with him, to come back to sanity, he knew his old friend could find a way back to Rose for him. She was alone in another universe and he knew that the Master could figure out a way to get there, the two of them together, they could do it.

"Do you remember Nyssa?" the Master asked suddenly. "And that other one, the mouthy Aussie with the pout."

"Tegan."

"Right, right! Tegan! I was just thinking about her the other day. Wonder what she's up to? Should I go find out? I wonder if I've killed her yet?" he taunted and the Doctor sighed out, wondering what had happened to drive him so far away from even the man he used to be.

"You used to be better at this, Master, you're slipping," he informed him and watched the Master's face darken with anger.

"Whose fault is that?" the Master snapped. "You destroyed Gallifrey! Gallifrey! And for what? For these miserable crawling worms? To destroy the Daleks? Those clunking stupid pepper pots?" The Master surged to his feet and began pacing, his hands running through his hair, his face twisted in fury.

"It was the only way," he repeated and the Master spun and glared at him.

"You killed your entire family!" he shouted. His mood changed suddenly and he looked abruptly thoughtful. "Mind you, your brother was rubbish, so no big loss there, actually. Your son and his wife, awful people, hated them!" Then he turned and his eyes darkened again. "But your Mum? Your granddaughter? Now that was cold, Doctor, did they deserve that?"

He closed his eyes against the memory of his mother's face. The last time he'd seen her, looking at him with such worry and concern and Susan, with her soft smile, her anxious eyes, her gentle caring heart, thinking about her hurt even worse.

"Susan, I'm so sorry," he groaned out and his head fell into his hands and the Master went white with fury.

"Sorry?" he grumbled. "That's the best you can do is it? How pathetic. A billion years of Time Lord history, power, and majesty, and you destroy it for what? For them?" he gestured out at the window, indicating the Earth below them with contempt.

"For everything, for the rest of creation," the Doctor told him, but the Master was already storming away, fury in his steps, hands clenched at his sides. "Susan would have understood. I'm sure she would." He told himself and he really, really, hoped it was true.

2008 MTL

The loud bang was followed by sudden pain. He looked to where Lucy, his little puppy, his pet, was staring at him, eyes wide and unfocused, and he sighed. He collapsed backwards and the Doctor caught him, lowering him to the ground, but not releasing him.

"Always the women," he grumbled. He'd failed with Susan, been killed by that bug, and now his Susan-proxy, Lucy, had shot him. "Dying in your arms, happy now?" he asked the Doctor with an ironic lift of his brow.

"You're not dying, don't be stupid. It's only a bullet, just regenerate." He looked up into eyes that were sad, pitying, and was that a touch of desperation he was seeing?

"No," he answered, feeling as though he finally had one over on the Doctor. Whether he regenerated or not, he could always come back, but the Doctor didn't know that.

"One little bullet, come on," his oldest friend murmured to him, his eyes begging not to be left alone.

"I guess you don't know me so well... I refuse." Now the Doctor would know how it felt, he'd know how the Master had suffered, how he still suffered without Susan. He'd punish the Grandfather for the Granddaughter's rebuff. That was damn near poetic.

"Regenerate. Just regenerate! Please, please! Just regenerate, come on!" The Doctor was begging, how utterly delightful.

"And spend the rest of my life imprisoned with you?" After all, Susan had refused that fate with him, so it was only fair. He enjoyed the look of pain on the Doctor's face. (Oh Theta, how far we've fallen, you and I)

"You've got to! Come on. It can't end like this. You and me, all the things we've done. Axons! Remember the Axons? And the Daleks. We're the only two left. There's no one else... REGENERATE!" The silly fool was crying, crying for him, crying for the man who hated him, who wanted him dead. (My dearest friend, forgive me)

"How about that? I win," he replied, chuckling, and as he faded, he felt it, a sudden flash of fear and sorrow. "Will it stop, Doctor, the drumming, will it stop?" Koschei asked, wondering if after all this time, he might be able to escape from his madness.

"Koschei!" Somewhere in his mind, Susan was screaming, or at least her ghost was. "Don't leave me!" Good, she was suffering too, they both were.

That was perfect.

(Oh, Susan…I'm sorry)

The Doctor held his oldest friend, the final casualty of the Time War in his arms, feeling his body cooling, even as he tried to will him to live. He was gone, the Master was gone, and the Doctor was alone again. The soft hum of another of his kind's thoughts had faded away and he was left with the terrible aching pain in his mind once more.

The vast emptiness inside of him was too much to bear.

2008 MTL/ 2011PWTL

"Koschei! Don't leave me!" Her mind was in a turmoil as she jerked up from her desk with a sudden feeling of terrible loss. Tears blurred her vision and she clutched her chest, feeling her hearts stuttering in pain.

"Mrs. Campbell? Are you alright?" Lance asked solicitously. He was head of HR and all the office girls thought he was rather nice, but Susan couldn't shake the feeling that there was something insincere about him.

"Yes," she lied. "I'm fine." She sat down and took a few deep breaths. Something had happened, something terrible. She stood up and went to the Ladies.

Once inside, she sat down on a toilet lid in a stall and burst into tears.

She couldn't understand why she was crying until she realized that even the ghost of Koschei in her mind was now gone.

The bond had been shattered.

He was dead somewhere.

A feeling of despair washed over her; on a personal level she was devastated. He'd been in her head for nearly half of her life. He'd been the dream she'd clung to when all else had fallen away. She'd wanted so badly to save him, to bring him to a place of peace in his own mind.

She'd failed him utterly and that was torment enough for her.

But also, the Last Vision was still there in her head. She needed him if she was going to warn Grandfather, if she was going to be able to reach across the Void to him and tell him what he needed to know.

She needed him.

2008 MTL/ 2011PWTL

Susan looked up from her drawing table, her eyes glinting as she felt it. Time Lord minds, two of them!

"Grandfather!" She recognized the mind instantly, she'd been waiting nearly a year, sitting with Mr. Mott and Donna, alone now in their big house, watching the stars go out and holding tight to each other.

She'd taken her TARDIS out and found that the stars were really gone, she'd had a bad moment when she'd been nearly unraveled and had barely escaped back to Earth. She didn't know the cause of the destruction, but she knew it was bad.

Then, suddenly, it had stopped. The stars had returned and everything had gone back to normal, everyone around her forgetting it had ever happened. So, she'd waited. He had to be behind that after all.

She reached with her mind, trying to get to her Grandfather's awareness, but he was locked down emotionally, feelings contained, his internal pain so great, it kept her out. The other mind was chaotic, shattering, falling apart, she didn't understand, but she backed away quickly getting little that was coherent from it, and then, just as suddenly, he was gone again.

Damn the man, couldn't he stay still, in one place, for more than five minutes? She'd simply have to wait for the next time, or manage to find another Time Lord who could fix her TARDIS, since it was refusing to travel to any other universe than this one.

Rose Tyler stood on a beach, cold wind blowing through her soul and watched the TARDIS vanish. The Doctor, the new one, reached out and took her hand and together they stood there, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of their lives.

"I've gotten ahold of Pete! He's sending a zeppelin for us!" Jackie told them and the Doctor turned and grinned at her.

"Did he finally buy you one?" he asked and Jackie grinned back and nodded.

"When Tony was born," she chuckled.

He looked down at Rose and saw the tears tracking down her cheeks.

"Are you okay with all of this?" he asked softly, his other self hadn't really given her much choice in the matter.

"No, I'm not!" she wailed and he had a moment of sheer terror. Was he going to lose her? Was it over before it had even started? Suddenly she spun and flung herself into his arms, sobbing wildly and he wrapped her up tightly against his heart and held her.

"Oh, Rose, my love, it'll be all right. We'll make this work somehow, I promise," he babbled and Rose clutched him tightly, shoulders shaking. "I love you so much. I will always be here, by your side, I'll never leave you, I promise. We'll have such a wonderful time. We'll do anything you like, at your pace, however you want things done, okay? It'll be fine, my heart, it will," he babbled, trying to soothe the pain and grief she was feeling and she shook her head against his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Doctor," she mumbled and it took him a moment to realize that she was talking to him. She'd called him 'Doctor' and it made him deliriously happy. "I'm not crying because of you, I'm crying because of him," she told him and he was confused. "He'll be so lonely!" Understanding bloomed inside of him and he nodded.

"Lonelier than ever, because even the hope of you will be gone," he sighed out. No more Donna, no more Rose, what would his other self ever do? How would he survive?

"He couldn't watch me die, could he?" she whispered and he nodded.

"No, I don't think he could watch either of us die, really." She looked up at him and tears were still trickling down her face.

"I would have stayed with him forever," she sighed out and then dropped her head on his chest.

"He knows that and it means everything to him. But, watching someone you love that much growing old and dying is agonizing, but worse than that is living for centuries more, without them." She nodded against him. "I lost you once and it nearly killed me, I don't think he would have survived it again."

"So, you love me?" she asked, her head coming up and those amazing brown eyes were warm on his. He wiped the tears from her eyes and fetched out a handkerchief for her from his jacket pocket.

"Yup," he told her, popping the 'p' just to make her smile at him. She blew her nose and smiled again.

"And you want to spend the rest of your life with me?" she asked, her eyes filled with so much love that it made his single heart flutter.

"Oh yes," he agreed and he'd never meant anything as much as he'd meant that.

"Then where would you like to get married?" She cocked her head to one side, her smile dazzling.

"Rose Tyler, I will go anywhere, do anything, and wear anything, as long as it includes trainers, that you want. I don't care how we get married, as long as we do, and as long as we have a brilliant honeymoon," he informed her, watching her smile grow wider as he spoke to her.

"Here now! I'm planning this wedding and you are not wearing trainers to it!" Jackie interrupted and the couple looked at her in dismay.

"I bet there is a Justice of the Peace in town," Rose suggested.

"Run!" he laughed, grabbing her hand and taking off, their feet flying over the sand.

"Don't you dare, you two! I have waited all her life to plan her wedding!" Jackie shouted after them, but they were running and laughing and the whole world was in front of them. They had a lifetime together to get started on.

The long gray ribbon of the road between the bay and the nearest town gave them the opportunity to hold hands, swinging their clasped fingers between them with grins on their faces.

"So, did you know what he intended to do?" she asked him and watched him frown a bit.

"I had a suspicion, after all, aside from some minor differences, we're the same man. I even understand why he was angry at me, even if I can't agree with him on this," he told her and she frowned.

"You mean the whole 'genocide' thing?" she asked and he nodded again.

"When I destroyed both Gallifrey and the Daleks, it was the worst, most horrible feeling in the universe. I wondered if killing people, or getting them killed was all that I was good for. I thought that maybe I was a worse monster then any of the creatures that I'd fought for so long," he confessed and she stopped to step into his arms and hold him tightly. "Then you took my hand and I could see it in your eyes. I could see that I hadn't fallen as far as I'd feared. I wasn't a monster, after all." She kissed him again and he leaned into her, arms and lips so much warmer than they had been.

"Oh Doctor," she sighed. "I'm sorry that you had to go through all of that," she told him, stroking his hair gently.

"Yeah, but you fixed that, love, sure it still hurts like hell, but just the way you look at me makes it all better, really," he assured her and kissed her brow with gentle tenderness. They released each other and began walking up the road again.