The Little Street Girl

by MyLadyOfStories

Jace is a street girl, and has been for 2 years. She ran from her foster parents when she was 12, and never looked back. Jace was doing well, living anonymously as a boy until the spaceship crashed into Big Ben. And then everything changed when the Doctor found her. He gave her a home.

30. Ending Song

LAST CHAPTER!
The next book is called the Girl Of Colours, and will start with Callie moving in with Sarah Jane and Luke, joining the Bannerman Road Gang. It will then go into Series 6 after the end of SJA with the Man Who Never Was. Oh, and we'll find out the truth about Callie's adoption. Enjoy, my Lovelies! Izzi xxx

The Doctor:

"Now then, I've got a planet to run. Is everybody ready?" The Master literally asked the billions of himself around the world as I was gagged and bound, my daughter trapped back in the wooden restraints and her throat had been injected with a relaxant. She couldn't do more than whimper.

"Six billion, seven hundred and twenty seven million, nine hundred and forty nine thousand three hundred and thirty eight versions of us awaiting orders."

And then the Obama version spoke to us through the television. "This is Washington. As President of the United States, I can transfer all the United Nations protocols to you immediately, putting you in charge of all the Earth's defences."

A UNIT man now. "UNIT HQ, Geneva reporting. All under your command, sir."

"And this is the Central Military Commission here in Beijing, sir, with over two point five million soldiers, sir." It panned out to show the rest of them. "Present arms!"

My old best friend grinned at me as I just watched him stiffly. "Enough soldiers and weapons to turn this planet into a warship. Nothing to say, Doctor? Jacey Lyn? What's that? Pardon? Sorry?"

"You let them go, you swine." Wilf shouted at him, and Callie closed her eyes, tears trickling down her cheeks. This was the man who gave her her love of music and the colours that hurt her at times, and now? He was destroying her, taking away Luke.

"Oh, your dad's still kicking up a fuss. Well, he is a grandfather, someone Jace never had." Her name wasn't Jace, she chose her name as we chose ours. Calliope Jace Allison Smith. Callie...

He raised his chin defiantly. "Yeah? Well, I'd be proud if I was."

"Hush, now. Listen to your Master." And then his phone started to ring. "But that's a mobile."

Oh, no, no, Donna... She wouldn't have turned, she was like Callie, more of a Hybrid. "Yeah, it's mine. Let me turn it off.

He shook his head emphatically. "No, no, no, no, no. I don't think you understand. Everybody on this planet is me. And I'm not phoning you, so who the hell is that?"

"It's nobody." He told her quickly, as Callie opened her eyes again, the colour not picking one, going from red to blue to yellow, then back to red as she tried to help herself. "I tell you, it's nothing. It's probably one of them ring-back calls."

The Master started to search through his pockets, pulling out a revolver. Why did he have a gun, he sold newspapers! "Ooo, and look at this. Good man!" And then patronisingly threw it away, to get at the phone. "Donna. Who's Donna?"

"She's no one. Just leave it."

When did he ever do what he was told to do? But he hit answer, and I heard my best friends voice, the woman who helped me after I lost Jace to the parallel universe, before I got her back as Callie. "Gramps, don't hang up. You've got to help me. I ran out, but everyone was changing."

He turned to me and gave me an inquisitive look. "Who is she? Why didn't she change?"

"Gramps, I can't hear you."

"Well, it was this thing the Doctor did." Wilf told him. "He did it to her. The Metacrisis, just after Callie changed into how she is now." Regeneration. That's what happened, she regenerated, Wilfred.

Now I got a dirty look from him. "Oh, he loves playing with Earth girls. Ugh! Just look at what happens, you get a Hybrid!" The Master turned to look at one of his fellow selves. "Find her. Trace the call." Donna was still begging for help, and Callie looked from me to Wilf, asking the question with her eyes that she couldn't with her voice. It would wear off, but I'd have to help her get immune to it. "Say goodbye to the freak, Granddad."

Once the phone was on his ear, he started trying to help. "Donna, get out of there! Just get out of there. I'm telling you, run!"

"She's on Wessex Lane, Chiswick. Open the phone lines. Everyone on Wessex Lane. Red alert." Donna...

"What do I do?"

"Run, sweetheart, that's all." He told her. "Run for your life!"

There was a gasp on the phone. "There's more of them."

Please... Come on, work, fail safe, work... "Donna? What's happening? Are you still there?"

"They're everywhere."

"Look, I'm telling you to run, Donna. Just run, sweetheart." Wilfred shouted to his granddaughter. "Just run."

She was so scared, even more scared than I'd ever heard her. "It's not just them. I can see those things again. Those creatures. Why can I see a giant wasp?" Well, you did try to set fire to it with a magnifying glass.

Wilf was thinking that this was the end, that her mind would burn. "Donna, don't think about that. Donna, my love, don't!"

Donna was sobbing now. "And it hurts. My head. It keeps getting hotter, and hotter, and hotter, and hotter, and hotter!" There was a pause, when the failsafe kicked in. "What did I-"

The line went dead, and Wilf kept calling for his granddaughter, tears still streaming down Callie's face, faster now. "Donna? What was that? Donna? Donna, are you there? Donna.! Donna! Donna!"

My old friend looked back at me, smiling like there was nothing wrong, and I winked, getting him to come over and remove my gag. "That's better. Hello. But really, did you think I'd leave my best friend without a defence mechanism?"

"Doctor?" Her grandfather asked hesitantly. "What happened?"

"She's all right." I told him. "She's fine, I promise. She'll just sleep."

"Tell me, where's your TARDIS?" The Master asked me conspiratorially, while I could smell burning wood. Callie, no, your poor hands...

"You could be so wonderful."

Yeah, he wasn't listening. "Where is it?"

"You're a genius. You're stone cold brilliant, you are. I swear, you really are. But you could be so much more. You could be beautiful. With a mind like that, we could travel the stars. It would be my honour. Because you don't need to own the universe, just see it. To have the privilege of seeing the whole of time and space. That's ownership enough. You looked after my daughter, my Callie, you gave her a love of music and her colours, you cared for her, even though you would never admit it."

And now he actually considered this. "Would it stop, then? The noise in my head?"

Oh, that noise... It's what started all of this, from Gallifrey to the Grave, it had traumatised him. "We can help."

"I don't know what I'd be without that noise." He admitted sadly, and I saw the friend I had loved for so many years, the one who got me to run away, to explore instead of watch.

"I wonder what I'd be, without you, or her." I replied, looking at my daughter who was looking back at me, her blue eyes wide and her cheeks tearstained. She was trying to speak, but her vocal chords wouldn't move.

Wilf frowned from the other end of the room. "What does he mean? What noise?"

He looked back at him, starting to pace. "It began on Gallifrey, as children. Not that you'd call it childhood. More a life of duty. Eight years old. I was taken for initiation, to stare into the Untempered Schism."

"What does that mean?"

"It's a gap in the fabric of reality." I explained. "You can see into the Time Vortex itself. And it hurts. Normally that would be how a Time Lord gained their abilities, for Callie... It could have ripped her apart or made her all powerful."

The Master nodded, taking back over. "They took me there in the dark. I looked into time, old man, and I heard it calling to me. Drums. The never ending drums. Listen to it. Listen."

Oh please, please... "Then let's find it. You and me and Calliope."

"Except. Oh. Oh, wait a minute." He laughed, standing up straight again. "Oh, yes. Oh, that's good."

No, no, this wasn't good, not good at all. "What? What is?"

"The noise exists within my head, and now within six billion heads. Everyone on Earth can hear it. Imagine. Oh. Oh, yes." He was still laughing, and his skeleton was showing again, just for a moment.

" The Gate wasn't enough." I realised. "You're still dying."

My old friend paused, breathing like it hurt him just it exist. "This body was born out of death. All it can do is die. But what did you say to me, back in the wasteland?" The Master turned to Callie, who shied away from him. "You said the end of time, Jacey."

Stay away from her! "Callie said something is returning. We were shown a prophecy. That's why we need your help, and why you need to let her have her voice back."

"What if I'm part of it? Don't you see? The drumbeat is calling from so far away. From the end of time itself. And now it's been amplified six billion times. Triangulate all those signals. I could find its source. Oh, Doctor. That's what your prophecy was. Me!" And then for some reason this meant I had to be slapped across the face. Master Logic. "Where's the TARDIS?"

Yeah... Last time you borrowed her that didn't go down so well with her navigation. "No. Just stop. Just think."

He looked at his guard. "Kill him." He went over to Wilf, and the gun was trained on his head. "I need that technology, Doctor, and Jace's sound amplification. Tell me where it is, or the old man is dead."

"Don't tell him." Wilfred shouted to me, but I knew what was going on, and so did Callie who was laughing silently.

"I'll kill him right now!"

"Actually, the most impressive thing about you is that after all this time, you're still bone dead stupid." Callie mouthed, and the Master read her lips, getting the guard to aim at our friend. "You've got six billion pairs of eyes, but you still can't see the obvious, can you?"

"Like what? Jaclyn, what?"

"That guard is one inch too tall." I told him, and the Vinvocci knocked him out with the rifle but as the wood around Callie's hands set alight, before dropping off, her hands shrivelled and burnt. Oh, my little girl..

The helmet went up on Rossiter, and he looked at the Master in horror. "Oh my God, I hit him. I've never hit anyone in my life."

His girlfriend ran in, coming to let Wilfred out as Callie tried to with me, but her hands were too sore. "Well, come on. We need to get out of here fast."

"God bless the cactuses!"

"That's cacti." I corrected, but got shot down. Oops, maybe I should read up on the Vinvocci.

"Come on! We've got to get out."

Rossiter had tried to help Callie, but he wasn't having much luck either. "There's too many buckles and straps."

"Just wheel him."

Wait, what?! "No, no, no. Get me out. No, no, no, don't. Don't! No, no, no." But they weren't listening, and Callie couldn't speak up for me as she was struggling to make yes or no noises. is wheeled across in front of the camera feed to the screen.)

We paused at a junction, one was going towards their basement, and the other to the TARDIS. "Which way?"

"This way." No, that's the wrong way!

"No, no, no, no, no. The other way. We've got our TARDIS."

Addams wasn't listening to me. "I know what I'm doing."

Come on, this was not the way we needed to be going! "No, no, no, just just listen to me!" And then I saw what was coming up ahead of us. "Not the stairs. Not the stairs!" I was so not going to be sitting down for a while after this. "Worst rescue ever! Just, just stop and listen to me!"

The Master ran in with armed guards as we reached the basement, which wouldn't have happened if we'd gone to the bloody TARDIS! "Gotcha."

"You think so?" Addams asked, then pressed her wristwatch, and we were on her ship before we could protest.

"Now get me out of this thing!" I shouted the moment we were there, and Callie dropped, gagging. Sudden colour change from the teleport, make her very dizzy and give her vertigo.

She rolled her eyes, starting to undo them. "Don't say thanks, will you."

Callie looked up, managing to hoarsely croak something. "He's not going to let us go."

"Just hurry up and get me out! Come on." I shouted as Wilf stared out the window in awe.

"All right!"

And then I was free, and I zapped the teleport with the sonic screwdriver, turning off the teleport before facing her. "Where's your flight deck?"

"But we're safe. We're a hundred thousand miles above the Earth."

Callie rolled her eyes, her burnt hands limply by her side. "And he's got every single missile on the planet ready to fire." She croaked, holding her throat as she strained it.

That threw her. "Good point." And then we started to run, before I had to go back and gently lead Wilfred away from the window where he was still staring out.

"But we're in space!"

"Yep." I agreed, feeling like I was leading around an elderly person in the middle of a siege. "We've got to close it down!" I shouted when we reached the flick deck.

Rossiter shook his head. "No chance, mate. We're going home."

His girlfriend was already getting us ready to leave. "We're just a salvage team. Local politics has got nothing to do with us. Not unless there's a carnival. Sooner we get back to Vinvocci space the better." Yeah, and you'd be followed by missiles for as long as you were active.

"We're not leaving." I replied stiffly, as both Callie and I sonically sabotaged the controls, sending us into darkness, Cal then gasping in pain, her hands red and raw. "Shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush. It's OK, Love, it's ok." I whispered, hugging her carefully.

Addams was checking the window, the only way we'd see if anything was coming any longer. "No sign of any missiles. No sign of anything. You've wrecked the place!"

"The engines are burnt out." Rossiter added. "All we've got is auxiliary lights. Everything else is kaput. We can't move. We're stuck in orbit."

We were getting shouted at a lot for saving them. "Thanks to you two, you idiots!"

They left, and I carefully took Callie's hands by the wrist, and sat her down as tears kept trickling from the pain. "I know you two, though." Wilf was saying as I searched through a box for a first aid kit. "I bet you've got a plan, haven't you? Eh? Come on. You've always got a trick up your sleeve. Nice little bit of the old Doctor and Callie flim-flam," insert Tommy Cooper impression here. "Sort of thing? Eh? Oh, blimey."

"Callie, this is going to hurt." I told her honestly as I found the kit and there was an antiseptic spray. "I know you can't scream, not properly right now, but you're going to want to. Are you ready?" My daughter nodded, and I started to spray, and her face contorted, mouth open in a near silent scream, just a whimper that set a few of the machines sparking. "It's OK, Callie, it's going to be OK."

I finished that off and carefully bound them up, already starting to heal with the spray, so she could move them a little better, but they'd have to be cleaned regularly. We started working on some wiring together, Cal managing a little bit of sign language to be able to talk to me as her voice slowly came back, but then we stopped, seeing a bright object streaking toward the planet.

Wilfred came to find us a little later, Callie stood at the window, watching silently at the UK, where her boyfriend looked like her old father, the man who ripped apart her family. I had to get Luke back for her, or it would feel like part of her was always missing, like she was torn. "Aye, aye. Got this old tub mended?"

"Just trying to fix the heating." I admitted, messing with some more wires.

"Oh. I've always dreamt of a view like that." He laughed, looking down on the Earth so far below us. "Hee, hee. I'm an astronaut. It's dawn over England, look. Brand new day. My wife's buried down there. I might never visit her again now. Do you think he changed them, in their graves?"

Oh, Wilfred... "I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "No, not your fault."

Why didn't I believe you? If I'd made sure, if I'd searched the pyre, or if I'd stopped him being resurrected in the first place, I could have stopped everything before it started. "Isn't it?"

"Oh, 1948, I was over there." He pointed to the middle east. "End of the Mandate in Palestine. Private Mott. Skinny little idiot, I was. Stood on this rooftop, in the middle of a skirmish. It was like a blizzard, all them bullets in the air. The world gone mad. Yeah, you don't want to listen to an old man's tales, do you?"

"I'm older than you." I admitted as Callie came back over, and I wrapped my arms around her, kissing her long silky curls. "And she's almost the same age. I'm nine hundred and six, and she's 56."

He looked between us in admiration and awe. "What, really, though?" I nodded as Callie croaked an agreement. "Nine hundred years. We must look like insects to you."

No, no, you managed to make your race war free, something even the Time Lord's couldn't manage. "I think you look like giants."

Wilfred looked hesitant for a moment, before taking out the gun he'd had with the Master, back on Earth. "Listen, I, I want you to have this. I've kept it all this time, and I thought-"

"No."

"No, but if you take it, you could-"

Callie shook her head now, looking at it in horror. "No." She whispered, her hand shrivelled in her lap. "You had that gun in the mansion. You could have shot d, the Master, there and then."

The old man sighed. "Too scared, I suppose."

Exactly what you should be. Be more scared to take a life, and maybe your life won't be taken. "I'd be proud."

"Of what?"

"If you were my dad." I replied. "If you were Callie's grandfather."

He laughed a little now. "Oh, come on, don't start. But you said, you were told he will knock four times and then you die." Callie flinched, trying to hide the fear in her eyes, but the yellow showed. "Well, that's him, isn't it? The Master. That noise in his head? The Master is going to kill you."

"Yeah."

"Then kill him first."

"And that's how the Master started." I sighed, shaking my head. "It's not like I'm an innocent, or even Callie is. We've taken lives. I got worse. I got clever. Manipulated people into taking their own, or she'd send a sonic pulse, being able to shatter the nervous system, either a mercy killing, or a slow, agonising death. Sometimes I think a Time Lord lives too long. I can't. I just can't."

He paused, thinking for a moment. "If the Master dies, what happens to all the people?"

Please, I can't kill him, he's my best friend... "I don't know."

Wilfred didn't believe me and kept pushing. "Doctor CJ, what happens?"

My daughter looked at me, then at our friend, and her voice was a little louder, less strained. "The template snaps."

"What, they go back to being human?" They wouldn't even remember everything fully. "They're alive, and human. Then don't you dare, sir, little Miss. Don't you dare put him before them. Now you take this." He forced the gun into my hand, the metal cold and distasteful, like a jagged, bitter little pill. "That's an order, Doctor. Take the gun. You take the gun and save your life, live for your little girl. And please don't die. You're the most wonderful man and I don't want you to die."

"Never." I replied, giving him back the gun.

And then the tannoy started. "A star fell from the sky." The Master told us, and Callie frowned, not understanding. "Don't you want to know where from? Because now it makes sense, Doctor, Jacey Lyn. The whole of my life. My destiny. The star was a diamond." No... "And the diamond is a Whitepoint Star. And I have worked all night to sanctify that gift."

Callie paused, frowning at me. "Dad, what does that mean?"

I shushed her, trying to listen to what he was saying as my hearts thudded in my chest. "Now the star is mine. I can increase the signal and use it as a lifeline. Do you get it now? Do you see? Keep watching, Doctor, Little Jace. This should be spectacular. Over and out."

The transmission ended, and Wilf and Callie looked at me in confusion. "What's he on about? What's he doing? Doctor, what does that mean?"

"A Whitepoint star is only found on one planet." I told them, looking right at my daughter. She was too young, far too young... "Gallifrey. Which means it's the Time Lords. The Time Lords are returning."

"Well, I mean, that's good, isn't it? I mean, that's your people. You and Callie." They were elitists, and Callie would be deemed as wrong. What really was the difference between them and a Dalek?

I took the gun and started to run, my daughter sprinting after me as I went, heading for the flight deck. A signal could be heard as we got in there, and Cal blinked in time with it, the dull rhythm probably driving her insane. "What's that?" Addams asked.

"Coming from Earth. It's on every single wavelength."

Rushing around, both Wilf and Callie stared at me, and I paused every few moments to get my daughter to do something for me, only little things that wouldn't hurt her hands. "But you said your people were dead. Past tense."

Why did I have to explain this now, I was busy. "Inside the Time War. And the whole War was Timelocked. Like, sealed inside a bubble. It's not a bubble but just think of a bubble. Nothing can get in or get out of the Timelock. Don't you see? Nothing can get in or get out, except something that was already there."

"The signal." Callie realised, her voice almost back. "Since he was a kid."

I nodded, working furiously. "If they can follow the signal, they can escape before they die."

"Well, then, big reunion. We'll have a party."

"There will be no party." I told him darkly, looking at my little girl, who looked more scared of me right now. They wouldn't get near you, I promise, Calliope, I won't let them hurt you...

"But I've heard you talk about your people like they're wonderful."

Oh, my people. "That's how I choose to remember them, the Time Lords of old. But then they went to war. An endless war, and it changed them right to the core. You've seen my enemies, Wilf. The Time Lords are more dangerous than any of them."

Addams blinked behind me, not understanding. "Time Lords, what lords? Anyone want to explain?"

Ah, brilliant, just who I needed. "Right, yes, you. This is a salvage ship, yes? You go trawling the asteroid fields for junk?"

"Yeah, what about it?"

Brilliant, Molto Bene! "So, you've got asteroid lasers!"

"Yeah, but they're all frazzled."

Callie raised an eyebrow, before flicking up a lever easily. She saw the colours, she'd understand it. "Consider them unfrazzled."

I looked at the girl one, too busy to remember names again. "You there, what's your name? I'm going to need you on navigation." Now the man one. "And you, get in the laser-pod. Wilfred." He looked confused. "Laser number two. The old soldier's got one more battle."

"This ship can't move. It's dead!" The girl, Addams, shouted at me.

My daughter rolled her eyes. "Fix the heating? Turns back on the veins of the ship, meaning you can easily do this" Then she turned the power back on. My little girl, I was so proud of you... But you couldn't stay with me any longer, I was just tainting you. You were staying because otherwise I'd be alone, but you needed to think about yourself, let yourself be selfish for once.

"But now they can see us."

Yeah, I did know that, thanks. "Oh, yes!"

She was adamant about being in control. "This is my ship, and you're not moving it. Step away from the wheel."

That was definitely going to happen. Right after I did a thing. "There's an old Earth saying, Captain. A phrase of great power and wisdom, and consolation to the soul in times of need."

"What's that, then?" She asked dubiously.

"Allons-y!" I shouted, powering us toward the earth at an alarming angle. "Come on! Come on!"

"You are blinking, flipping mad." Yup!

I glanced over at Wilf and Rossiter. "You two. What did I say? Lasers."

"What for?"

Callie rolled her eyes, trying to boost the shield as best she could with 3rd degree burns. "Because of the missiles. We've got to fight off an entire planet for some reason."

They both went to take their places as we kept hurtling through the air, over the ocean. "We've got incoming."

"Look at this one!" The male Cactus cried in alarm. "Oh, my God!"

My god you were as bad as a Tivoleon. "You two, open fire!" I shouted, skimming the water to dodge them. "Open fire! Come on, Wilf!"

"Whoo!" Wilfred laughed as he shot at them. "Oh, I wish Donna could see me now." One day... One day she'd remember. But only for a moment.

"And there's more." Addams called from the radar. "Sixteen of them. Oh, and another sixteen."

My daughter just stared at her. "Then get on the rear gun lasers! You two, open fire! Now!"

"No, you don't!" I cried, doing a flip to avoid some. "Come on! Fire!"

Then the front window got knocked in, and Callie yelped as she was showered in glass, cutting her arms and face. "Dad, slow down! You're going to crash!"

"Can't slow down or we won't make it." I shouted back. "Lock the navigation. England. The Naismith mansion."

"Fifty kliks and closing." Addams shouted after a Moment. "We've locked on to the house. We are going to stop, though. Doctor? We are going to stop?"

Wilf called up from his pod. "Doctor? Doctor, you said you were going to die." But I would never take anyone else with me. "But is that all of us? I won't stop you, sir. But is this it?"

I pulled the spaceship's nose up at the last moment, then ran over to my daughter, opening a hatch in the floor. "Calliope." I smiled softly, looking at her terrified face. "Be brave, be amazing. I love you my daughter." Then, with the revolver ready, I jumps down through the glass dome, hearing her scream for me, shattering the glass before I hit it. Landing hard on the marble floor, I couldn't hold the revolver and I couldnt even stand for the pain I was in.

There were five Time Lords where the the Gate had been, on two raised steps, haloed in a white light. "My Lord Doctor. My Lord Master. We are gathered for the end."

"Listen to me. You can't!"

Rassilon, the cause of Gallifreys Fall, would never listen. "It is a fitting paradox that our salvation comes at the hands of our most infamous child."

You really believed that? You were stupider than I initially thought. "Oh, he's not saving you. Don't you realise what he's doing?"

"Hey, no, hey!" He interrupted. "That's mine. Hush. Look around you. I've transplanted myself into every single human being. But who wants a mongrel little species like them, because now I can transplant myself into every single Time Lord. Oh, yes, Mister President, sir, standing there all noble and resplendent and decrepit. Think how much better you're going to look as me." Rassilon merely raised his gauntlet, and reversed the process, turning everyone back to normal. "No, no, don't. No, no, stop it! No, no, no, don't!"

"On your knees, mankind." The Lord President ordered, and peopled obeyed. This wasn't a man to ignore.

My old friend was still trying to save himself from the hole he'd dug. "No, that's fine, that's good, because you said salvation. I still saved you. Don't forget that."

"The approach begins."

"Approach of what?"

Oh, why... Why couldn't you just listen, why couldn't you have been the friend that I needed and remembered, and just trust me? "Something is returning. Don't you ever listen? That was the prophecy. Not someone, something. They're not just bringing back the species. It's Gallifrey. Right here, right now."

People started to run from the room as the planet started to materialise in the sky above us, everything shaking as my daughter and Wilfred pushed their way inside. "But, I did this. I get the credit. I'm on your side."

"Dad!" Callie cried. "Dad, daddy!"

Wilfred let out a man from the glass booth as she ran to my side, and held me up, even though we told him not to. Was I invisible, why was no one listening to me? "But this is fantastic, isn't it? The Time Lords restored."

"You weren't there in the final days of the War." I told the Master as Calliope was getting dark looks from Rassilon. She was a hybrid, mostly Time Lord, but also that little bit of human. "You never saw what was born. But if the Timelock's broken, then everything's coming through. Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-have-been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres. The War turned into hell. And that's what you've opened, right above the Earth. Hell is descending. Callie could sing her hearts out, but her voice wouldn't stop it."

"My kind of world."

"Just listen, dad!" Cal cried, her voice back, but still full of pain. "Because even the Time Lords can't survive that, I sure as hell couldn't, and you care about me, I know you do, your voice gives you away, it's why you never spoke about me before, because the reds and the lilacs would give you up."

Rassilon interrupted us. "We will initiate the Final Sanction. The end of time will come at my hand. The rupture will continue until it rips the Time Vortex apart."

The Master stared at him in horror. "That's suicide."

"We will ascend to become creatures of consciousness alone." If he had a working brain, I'd eat my hat. If I had a hat, anyway. "Free of these bodies, free of time, and cause and effect, while creation itself ceases to be."

I looked at him, the knowledge of what I'd had to stop fresh in my mind. "You see now? That's what they were planning in the final days of the War. I had to stop them."

He wouldn't give up. "Then, take me with you, Lord President. Let me ascend into glory."

"You are diseased, albeit a disease of our own making. No more."

And then Callie took the gun from me, aiming it at the President, except it was engulfed in colour, every colour, every spectrum. Bad Wolf. "Choose your enemy well, Abomination. We are many. The Master is but one. You are enough like us to ascend, the colours of the universe could become your building blocks." Calliope, please...

"But he's the President." He old father goaded as I just leaned weakly against the floor. "Kill him, and Gallifrey could be yours, my Jace." But then she whirled, the colours streaming like the aurora borealis around her, and the gun trained on him instead. "He's to blame, not me. Oh, the link is inside my head. Kill me, the link gets broken, they go back. You never would, you coward. A real daughter of mine could do it. Go on then. Do it." Tears were streaming down her face as she turned back to the President, and I knew she couldn't do it. She'd taken lives, she'd told me so, but every time she felt herself start to shatter, like she died with them. "Exactly. It's not just me, it's him. He's the link. Kill him!"

"The final act of your life is murder. But which one of us?"

My eyes fixed on the Woman behind Rassilon, and her hands lowered, looking over my shoulder. Mother... My Mother... I knew what she wanted me to do, to protect my daughter, protect those I needed to. So I grabbed the gun from Calliope and she dropped to the ground, sobbing in harsh grey sobs as I aimed it at the Master. "Get out of the way." Then he moved, and I shot at the machine holding the Link in place, before the Time Lords started being sucked away. "The link is broken. Back into the Time War, Rassilon. Back into hell. Backing the hell away from my daughter who is anything but an Abomination!"

"You'll die with me, Doctor."

That was something I'd realised a long time ago. "I know."

The gauntlet was aimed at me as my mother covered her face once more. Until the Master moved beside me. "Get out of the way, and protect that little girl with everything, Doctor." He told me, before attacking the Lord President with his life energy. "You did this to me! All of my life! You made me! One! Two! Three! Four! Made it impossible for me to care for those I loved like Jace!"

He was forced to his knees, pushing into the light as Gallifrey and my people fell, Callie still sobbing as I wrapped my arms around her, until we were engulfed in the light again.

And then it faded, I was still here. "I'm alive. I've. There was. I'm still alive." I told myself, looking to see my daughter unconscious, the bandages on her hands bloodstained and she was bleeding from the glass cuts, but otherwise OK.

Knock, knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock, knock.

"They gone, then?" Wilf asked from inside the nuclear control box. "Yeah, good-o. If you could let me out?"

"Yeah." I nodded, seeing how the song played out. How it played out to the end.

"Only, this thing seems to be making a bit of a noise."

Well, it would. "The Master left the Nuclear Bolt running. It's gone into overload."

He didn't understand. "And that's bad, is it?"

"No, because all the excess radiation gets vented inside there." I explained, holding back my emotions with a wall of Azbantium, 4 times harder than diamond. "Vinvocci glass contains it. All five hundred thousand rads, about to flood that thing."

Wilfred blinked a little. "Oh. Well, you'd better let me out, then."

If only. "Except it's gone critical. Touch one control and it floods. Even this would set it off." I indicated to the sonic, then looked at Callie. "She'd end up letting it leak everywhere, she can't aim very well."

"I'm sorry."

They always were. "Sure."

"Look, just leave me."

Because I could, I could do that, really. I could just let him die, Donna's grandfather, the man she'd always had believe in her, even before I did. "Okay, right then, I will. Because you had to go in there, didn't you? You had to go and get stuck, oh yes. Because that's who you are, Wilfred. You were always this. Waiting for me all this time. Just as I got Callie back, my daughter."

"No really, just leave me. I'm an old man, Doctor. I've had my time."

"Well, exactly. Look at you. Not remotely important. But me? I could do so much more. So much more! But this is what I get. My reward. And it's not fair!" I screamed into the void as I shoved all the paperwork off a table, and Callie started to stir. She was so young, she shouldn't have to deal with this. She was just a child in our eyes, the eyes of our people. "Oh. Oh. I've lived too long."

"No. No, no, please, please don't. No, don't! Please don't! Please!" Wilfred begged me as I walked towards the other door, my hand on the thick glass.

"Wilfred, it's my honour. Better be quick. Three, two, one." And then I quickly went into the booth, and let the man out, and I started to crumple as the radiation hit me, crying out in agony. Please, please, please, let it be quick... I curled into a ball, waiting for death, as a hand touched the other side of the glass, and I looked up to see my Calliope, anxious and terrified. "Callie."

" What?" Wilfred asked as I got to my feet shakily, the pain starting to ebb away. "Hello."

Right, what exactly happened? "Hi."

My daughter stared at me, her blue eyes wide in panic. "D, d, dad?"

"The system's dead. I absorbed it all. Whole thing's kaput." I touched the door lightly and it swung open. "Oh. Now it opens, yeah."

"Well, there we are, then." Wilf laughed as I walked out. "Safe and sound. Mind you, you're in hell of a state. You've got some battle scars there, both of you." I rubbed my face wearily, and they both stared at me, and Cal started to cry again. Please... Be brave my amazing, colourful girl... "But they've. Your face. How did you do that?"

"It's started." I told him, holding my daughter close, and Wilf hugged me too as I fought back the tears. I had to let her go, I had to stop her becoming like me.

We dropped off Wilfred with his family, nursing Donna back to health after everything, and moved to Bannerman Road, where Callie had to run right away to stop Luke from being hit by a car. "Callie!" He cried, hugging her tight and she clung to him, clung like her life depended on it. That was what made me sure this was right.

I walked back silently to the door of the TARDIS as they crossed the road safely now, and she saw me. "Dad? Dad, w, what are you-" And then she realised. "No! Dad!" She started to run back but I was already through the doors, and I dematerialised before she could get inside. I watched her on the monitor, tears running down her already snail trailed and cut cheeks. "DAD! Please, please, daddy!"

"I'm so, so sorry my Callie." I whispered to the silence in the TARDIS. "I love you with everything, and everything is what I'm giving you. Good luck my Girl of Colours."

My song was ending, but hers was just getting started.