"I don't understand what you're talkin' about," Rose said, not at all fancying the strange expressions on either Doctor's face.

"When I was inside his time stream," Clara began, "I saw all his different faces, all eleven Doctors, but then I saw someone else. The Doctor called him his secret, and said that he'd broken a promise. He said that it was him, but not the Doctor."

Rose turned to her Doctor and took his hand reassuringly. "It's the Time War, isn't it? You've told me all about it, and I know you had to do terrible things, but I also know how much good you've done, how many people you've saved. And you know that I love you, right? I love all of you, forever."

His hand convulsed around hers, but he refused to meet her eyes, instead staring intently at the ground. "Oh, Rose…the only one who knows all about the Time War is me. There are things…if you ever even suspected…you'd run screaming from me and never look back."

"When 'ave I ever run away from anything you've shown me? Whatever it is, whatever you think is so bad…just tell me."

"It doesn't matter, Rose," Clara said softly.

"How can you say that? You, of all people?"

"Because this isn't about us. It doesn't matter how much we love him; the only thing that can save us all right now, is for him to forgive himself."

"Some things are unforgivable, Clara," her Doctor muttered.

"Do I really regenerate into such a dunderhead?" that gruff, unseen voice complained.

Clara gasped back a peal of laughter, because that particular insult was just so, well insulting.

"Are you even listening to what these two rather extraordinary young ladies have been saying? Because it's important, and one of them just said something she's never said aloud to you before, and you just stand there wallowing."

"Is that…?" Rose whispered to Clara.

"Yes."

"Is there a way to see you?" Rose asked. "It's a bit weird, talkin' to thin air."

"Your wish is my command." A battered, weather-beaten man who matched the gravelly voice materialized. "Hello again, my lady Clara."

"Hello," she replied faintly.

Rose took a hesitant step towards the newcomer.

"Rose, stay back," her Doctor warned, reaching out to catch her sleeve.

"Why should I?" she replied, more sharply than usual as she shook her arm free of his grasp. "He's done nothin' to hurt me. In fact, he saved me an' Clara." She studied this strange, new Doctor intently. "You're a bit like the Doctor when I first met him."

"We were both born of the war, Rose," he explained gently. "A certain similarity is to be expected."

"Will you tell us what happened?" Clara asked.

The other Doctor straightened his shoulders and spoke with quiet dignity. "I destroyed two sentient races, one of them my own."

"Did you have any choice?" Rose asked.

"There is always a choice," Clara's Doctor insisted.

"You, hush," Clara said firmly. "You wouldn't answer me. He's at least trying."

"You can't imagine what it was like. The Daleks were infected with the madness of Davros; I knew that, I expected it. What I didn't expect was the madness of my own people. To be confronted by one of the greatest heroes of my civilization, only to have him be revealed as even more twisted and corrupt than the creature who created the Daleks…"

"That is a lot of crazy," Rose breathed.

He smiled a bit at that, but then, Rose had always had that effect on the Doctor, whichever incarnation he happened to be. It was amazing what that smile did for his craggy face. Clara thought she could see a touch of her own Doctor there, too.

"What happened next?" Clara asked.

"They burned. All of them. It was…I was so sure at the time…it was the only way…the only way to keep their mutual insanity from sweeping out into the universe." A lone tear trailed down his cheek and his voice sank down to a haunted whisper. "Everything burned."

"And you?" Rose murmured, coming close enough to take his roughened hand in her own.

"I burned, too. I wanted nothing more in that instant than to just burn along with everything I'd ever loved, and everything I'd ever hated, but I knew that the war must be time locked, so that the madness would be contained, and so, I forced myself to regenerate, into the Doctor that you would eventually meet, Rose."

"An' you were alone, that whole time?" Rose asked, her eyes filled, not with the horror he expected, but rather, with compassion.

He nodded wearily.

"Well, you're not alone now," Rose said decisively, wrapping both arms around him.

After a moment, Clara followed suit.

The old man simply stood there for a long, long moment, hardly daring to breath.

"We're not made of glass, you know," Clara reminded him gently. She felt his chuckle as a dull rumble against her cheek as he slipped his arms around her and Rose, tentatively at first, then with the fierce strength she'd come to know from her own Doctor.