Chapter 20 – Bloody Norway

"So, you destroying the Daleks reminded the other Doctor of all of his own past actions?" she asked next, trying to get some understanding of his mind.

"Yeah, I think seeing me do that, even after all that we both had seen, it hurt him, made him feel like a monster all over again." The Doctor shook his head with another sigh.

A car came towards them and the Doctor waved it down. It was a little Citroën and the driver was a tiny old woman who looked at them suspiciously. The Doctor spoke to her in Norwegian, at least Rose assumed it was and the woman thawed instantly, smiling and laughing at whatever he was saying. She had a face like a withered apple and bright sharp eyes.

She nodded and the Doctor opened the back door and they climbed in, him still chattering away to the old lady.

"This is Mrs. Falla, her family has lived around here for hundreds of years, she's going to take us to the Mayor, so we can get a license, and then we can go to the local church," he chirped happily to her and Rose found that she was grinning. He really hadn't changed much; he could still make friends in the most unlikely places.

The back seat was tiny and cramped, but neither of them minded.

The ride into the tiny town of Askvoll was picturesque. Mountains, water, rock, scrubby grass, the birds that were everywhere in the air, on the ground, perched on rocks, or in the infrequent trees that twisted up out of the ground.

Norway was beautiful, but Rose was feeling like she really wanted to go home. Too many life changing events seemed to happen here for her. At least, this one was going to be a good one. She grinned up at the Doctor and he grinned right back at her, and she felt like a goofy kid. They were getting married. It was certainly about time.

"I wish I had a working TARDIS Rose, I'd take you to all the best places," he whispered, looking down at the coral cupped in his hand, and she could see the sadness that lurked in the back of his eyes. After hundreds of years of having all of space and time at his feet, he was now trapped on the slow path with her, at least until they could figure out what to do with the coral the Doctor had left them with.

"We can still go anywhere, you know, Paris, Tokyo, and everywhere else on Earth," she assured him. "It's a big planet." He nodded and squeezed her hand.

"This, you and me, this is gonna be the best adventure ever," he told her and his eyes were bright and the sorrow had receded. She looked up at him and nodded.

"Big adjustment though, eh?" she asked, not quite ready to let go of the subject. They had a lot to work out, after all.

"It's not my first trip around the block, Rose Tyler," he disputed. "I was married before, had a son, a daughter-in-law, and a granddaughter. I had a brother, who was an arse, a mother that I adored, and a father I was determined not to grow up to be like; family is not something new for me. Just because they're all dead now, doesn't mean that I don't remember what it was like or what the job of husband entails," he told her and his voice was soft and filled with a longing she hadn't heard in it before.

"You must miss them so much," she murmured and wrapped an arm around his shoulder.

"My Mum and my granddaughter, yeah, I miss them every day. The rest of the family?" he shrugged. "It varies between a relief not to have to deal with them anymore and guilt that I feel that way. I loved my son, but he was ready to turn my little Susan over, just because it was politically expedient."

"So, not the happiest family life, then," she teased and he grinned at her.

"Oh, my little Susan and I were very happy, she'd have loved you, Rose, she would."

"She'd have approved of you marrying a human?" she asked in disbelief.

"Why not? She did," he told her and she blinked in surprise at that revelation. "It was, I think, the main reason the other me couldn't do it. I watched Susan after her husband died of old age. There she was, still young and vibrant, and she just froze over with grief. She never did recover. Two hundred years after his death and she still never dated, never remarried, never even looked at another man."

"Oh! How terribly sad," Rose gasped, suddenly seeing what the cost of marrying her would have been for the Time Lord Doctor. "I never thought about it, I guess, what would happen after."

"I know. It's hard to think that way when you're young. You only see the immediate joy and the long term sorrow seems so far away. But nine hundred years, Rose, it's a lot of perspective. It's a lot of painful experience." He rubbed at his head and she leaned against him, seeking comfort and warmth. He held her against him and she could feel him tense up.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm just still angry, I guess, angry at him for judging me. It's always all right for him to kill off a whole planet, but the minute someone else does it, it's suddenly a big problem," he grumbled and she grinned at him.

"Don't talk about yourself like that," she teased and he shook his head in amusement.

"I hereby apologize for having been an arse for the last nine centuries," he announced and Rose giggled.

"Apology accepted."

They reached the center of Askvell and Mrs. Falla dropped them off with happy congratulations. He waved good-bye to her, already feeling charmed with his new life. He'd rarely had to hitch a lift before. Having your own TARDIS insulated you a bit from such things.

"I ever tell you about the time that Marco Polo stole my TARDIS?" he asked Rose and she laughed.

"No! Really?"

"Yeah, I got stuck travelling the Silk Road with him for just months, trying to convince him to let me have it back. I almost won it back from Kublai Khan in a backgammon match, but the old cheater beat me in the end," he complained and Rose looked up at him with her smiling eyes and her tongue-tipped grin and he felt utterly content with everything. Well, except for the loss of his entire race, being dumped into an alternate universe, and not having a working TARDIS anymore.

"What was he like, Marco Polo?" she asked and he sighed.

"Far too trusting of the wrong sorts of people. Ian liked him a lot, but I really couldn't like a man who'd steal from an old man and a young girl," he grumbled and Rose laughed again.

"I bet he didn't know how old you really were!" she chortled and he sighed.

"Actually, back then I was really quite young. I looked so much older than I do now, but I was really still just a kid. I hadn't had all that Time Lord arrogance knocked out of my head yet either," he admitted and she stared at him. "What?"

"When did that happen, exactly, the bit where you stopped being arrogant?"

"Oi!" he shot back. "You should have seen me before, Rose, or met the High Council on Gallifrey! Now there was a load of stuffed shirts with more egotism than common sense! Don't even let me get started on Rassilon either! That man took narcissism to whole new heights!" he told her, with a roll of his eyes.

"All right, all right, I can see that you are an icon of humility in comparison," she teased and he started to calm down again. It seemed that he was a lot more angry in this body than he was in the other, or maybe he just wasn't as good at hiding the anger that they both had buried in them.

The memory of watching Gallifrey burn, of knowing that everyone he loved was dying or dead, hearing the screams of Time Lords and Daleks alike echoing in his head, washed over him. Tears pricked his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "I know I'm a bit rubbish, a sort of second-best, or also ran, for you." She grabbed him hard and kissed him, arms around his neck and body pressed against his. He was quickly overwhelmed by the sensations, her mouth on his, her hair against his face, the pulse of her heart against his own. Everything was washed away by her onslaught on him and he embraced her, holding her against him, falling into her gravity, burning up on re-entry, and happy to die in her arms.

She pulled back and they were both shaken by the intensity that was moving through them. She looked him in the eyes, her hands on either side of his face, making him look at her.

"You're not second best and you're not rubbish. You're the only one, of the two of you, who was willing to stick by me. You're the one who was able to tell me how you feel, the only one who would kiss me, hold me, and make me feel like I was worth standing beside. He left me, you didn't. That's not rubbish, that's what's really important, that's what matters. He's the one that's a bit rubbish, actually, because he ditched me," she informed him with a fierce glare and that aspect hadn't occurred to him before.

"He…" he began, but she cut him off.

"Don't let's make excuses for him, we both know it's not because he didn't love me, or want me. He couldn't make that leap, he couldn't risk his heart and I understand that. It hurts like hell, but I do get it. But I don't want to ever hear you say that you're less than he is, when you're so much more!"

He buried his face in her hair and held her tightly.

"Rose Tyler, I love you," he murmured and she squeezed him tightly.

"I love you too, Doctor," she told him. "Now, before Mum gets ahold of the police or something, let's get married.

"Allons-y!" he shouted and they ran for the town council building, hand and hand, grinning like children.

2009 MTL/ 2012PWTL

A week before Christmas and Susan was lying awake in Donna's spare bedroom. Wilf had begged her to come and stay and she hadn't been able to say no.

Since Geoff and Sylvia's conversions and deaths, Donna had struggled to pay the mortgage on her own. The insurance money hadn't helped much, "Cyber-conversion" wasn't really covered in the policy and the Cybermen who'd been proven to have killed themselves were considered "Suicides", which was all that had kept the insurance companies from going broke.

Susan had done what she could. She'd given Wilf a lotto ticket and he'd won enough to cover the mortgage for the year. She was unhappy even about that little bit of manipulation, but she'd needed to do something for them.

She had been tossing and turning all night, feeling as though something was happening, something that made her skin itch and her mind buzz.

She quieted her mind, forcing herself to be calm, and finally fell asleep.

She saw a woman, who looked rather like herself from her last regeneration, a girl really, not very old at all, she was sitting in a cell, weeping.

"What's wrong," she asked and knelt before the girl, reaching to take her small cold hands in hers.

"They'll come for me soon, the Cult of Saxon," the girl whispered. "I'm scared. I don't want to die."

"Why would they kill you?" Susan asked, fearful for this poor girl, wondering how she could help her.

"Because they want to bring him back, they want to bring him back to life, but they mustn't! He's evil!" she sobbed.

"What's your name?"

"Lucy Saxon," she sighed out. "I'm his wife." She broke into sobs and Susan sat beside her on the bench, rocking her gently. She wanted to give her comfort, to say that she would help, but she didn't know where they were.

"Where is this place?" she asked next.

"Broadmoor Prison."

"What on Earth are you doing in a prison, Lucy!" she looked into the broken eyes, saw the pain, the grief, and the horror in her and felt her hearts go out to the girl.

"I shot him, I killed the Master," she whispered and Susan jerked back from her.

"What?" she gasped, staring at the poor broken child, with her emotions in a tumult. Koschei, the beautiful soul she'd protected for two hundred years, the man who'd haunted her dreams, her mind for so long, she'd killed him? Yet, she could see the fractures in the girl's thoughts; she could see the brutality she'd been subjected to.

"He'd done the most terrible things, killed so many people, and the Doctor was going to let him get away with it all. He was going to take him away and he'd be in my head for the rest of my life, touching me, making me still want him!" the broken sobbing catalyzed her to gather Lucy up in her arms again. She murmured soothingly to her, stroking her hair.

"I'm so sorry for what you've gone through, Lucy. I'm so sorry."

"What's your name?"

"Susan."

Lucy drew back from her, eyes wide and filled with anger.

"Susan?" she spat out. "That's the name he used to call out when he was doing me! He would hit me, throw me down, use me like I wasn't anything at all, and call out for "Susan" while he did. He'd dream about her, whispering her name, he'd look at me and I would know it wasn't me he was seeing." The anger wound down and the girl was sobbing again and Susan gently draped an arm around her, cradling her against her chest. "I loved him so much, but I was never enough, never the right one."

Oh Koschei, she cried out in her mind, what did you do? My brilliant madman, you've gone so far away from yourself.

"I would have shot him too," Susan admitted and the girl looked up at her with heartbreaking sweetness, a small smile spreading across her lips.

"Thank you, Susan. You don't know what it means to hear someone say that to me. All I've heard was how wrong I was, how terrible a thing I'd done. Everyone judged me for it, but truly I just wanted him out of my mind."

"Oh sweetie," she patted the girl softly and kept rocking her.

"They'll be here soon and then I'll die," Lucy murmured. "I wanted to live, I really did. I don't want to die." The girl started to weep and Susan held her until she fell asleep and then sat stroking her hair, staring out the prison cell window and wondering, not for the first time, if she were crazy to imagine there was something good in the Master, if there had been any way to save him, or if his death had been the kindest result.

She woke in her own bed and she realized she'd been dreaming again, but this dream was baffling to her. What sort of twisted subconscious did she have to dream up something as awful as what happened to poor Lucy?

"Because they want to bring him back, they want to bring him back to life, but they mustn't! He's evil!"

She jolted to full awareness and the words seemed to ring in her ears. Something terrible was going to happen soon, she knew it.

Four Days Before Xmas

He was laughing in her head. His eyes were wild, his face distorted and she cried out in sorrow and grief for the madness that had consumed him. He was lost in the drumbeat, falling apart, and he needed her to fix him, to make it better, but no matter how she reached for him, she couldn't touch him, couldn't do anything but weep for him.

"Koschei!" she screamed and sat upright in the bed, heart pounding with fear, both for him and for the world.