Chapter 2

The Bad Wolf had been pawing at the edges of her mind for week, leaving her restless and more than eager for their first trip on the new TARDIS, even if it didn't feel quite right yet. Her wolf had been quiet for years, with the exceptions of an odd congratulatory growl of smug pride at the birth of each of their children, the wolf had been quiet. She'd once felt that her mind would never be entirely human again, as Bad Wolf had nipped at her heels and scratched at her dreams constantly through the years she'd spent separated from her Doctor by a universe. It was the Bad Wolf that let her survive the Cannon over and over. The Bad Wolf that let her survive what a normal human could not. She'd thought that would be enough, when she found him, to make her a suitable mate for a Time Lord, that being more than human would make her enough for him. But she'd never gotten the chance to tell him before he'd dumped her back in Pete's World with himself.

But her wolf had been silent then, content with the result, and that as much as anything had let her start to truly believe that the copy — the half human Doctor that became her friend, then her lover, and then her husband in a whirlwind of fights and marathon shags and brilliant swirling emotion — her partner was also truly her Doctor.

The past weeks of restlessness, the wolf songs on the radio. The werewolf sightings in Scotland. That popularity of that terrible movie series with the sparkly werewolves and the half-naked vampires. The odd golden glow in her daughter Maya's eyes. Something was up.

She felt the throb in that more-than-human part of her mind even before she'd followed the Doctor's gaze toward that shimmering, almost painfully attractive light. Then her eyes fell on the figure staggering on unsteady thin legs at the edge of the chasm — no, the Schism. The Untempered Schism that the Doctor had whispered about in the dark of the night when they lay together, too close to tell where one ended and one began, and he told her the secrets that lay in the dark of his eyes in every incarnation.

No one should survive that. No one could have climbed out of that.

But the Doctor had. Of course he had, the blighter.

"Doctor!" she cried, still unbelieving, and not sure who she was crying out for. Bad Wolf growled within her.

The figure inching closer and coming into focus was not her Doctor, her husband, whose mind was a warm purr in hers, like a contented cat on her mum's windowsill. But this other, he was the Doctor — the other version of him, past or present or future she had no idea. Timey wimey and all that rubbish. But he was the one who had spoken to her, when she was ripping through universes.

Thin and lanky and all done up in tweed with mad hair, familiar but not at all the same. He'd been standing outside of a wedding reception when she'd run out of the Void and into a hallway. He'd looked straight at her and she'd remembered his eyes — though they were green, not blue or brown. "It's not the right time, Rose Tyler." A mad, sad grin, but not the one she longed for. Still, very him. Some things never changed. She'd wanted to stay. She'd seen, from a distance, almost every incarnation of him. The crickety one. The mad angry man in the impossibly awful coat. The poet. The schemer. The one who played a recorder. She'd seen them laugh and bluster and run, always running, with some friend at their side. The girl with the alien eyes and the sixties hair with the white-haired Doctor had seen her once and spoken as those eyes flashed gold, "It's not time yet for the Bad Wolf." She'd jumped away quickly, scared as she hadn't been in years. But this tweed Doctor with the bow tie, he'd been the only Doctor to see her, speak to her. He'd known who she was. He came after.

She could feel him in her mind as well, and it was bloody well hard enough getting used to her husband being there, and then their two kids on top of that, not to mention the Wolf that was her and not her. Adding anyone else was just too bloody crowded!

Just to add the vinegar, this one's mind was a discordant note, far too close in tone to her Doctor, but full of such deep pain and sorrow that her eyes were already tearing up.

Without realizing what she was doing, she stepped forward, one step — two — and then she began to run. Loping really, the wolf howling in pain and triumph and worry. Her husband followed after a moment, and she wasn't sure if he was chasing her to stop her or trying to get to this other version of himself first. If she could too could feel the pain, he had to be drowning in it.

Pain. He needs…I'm always yours, but he needs…
…go, I understand.

This one was thin as a reed, worse than hers, but with big hair, curled at the front like a great big geek, and enough chin to sharpen an axe on. And he wore tweed, a battered bow tie, and then there was the cowboy hat. Odd, but somehow so very Doctor. And he needed someone. She didn't bother slowing down or taking no for an answer, she flung herself at him and embraced him, taking his weight as he almost collapsed into her arms, his frame so frail and light she thought one good puff of air would send him sailing back into that great abyss behind him. The wolf throbbed golden at the edges of her mind, whimpering in concern.

"Rose Tyler…" he whispered, his voice gravelly. He still said her name just so, but it lacked the touch of awe that she'd heard from her own two Doctors. He knew her, but at a distance. The next Doctor, or even one after that. How long had it been?

"Three hundred forty six years, one month, two days and seventeen point three hours, and you're still so beautiful." He grinned at her, finally returning her embrace before stepping back, heaving for breath. Of course he could hear her thoughts, drat him. With his respiratory bypass still functioning, she wondered at what he'd been through to be short of breath — something very rare in her two years with the Time Lord.

"Three hundred forty six years…." She swallowed. A lifetime. Her own Doctor skittered to a halt, staring with wide brown eyes at his new face — the one he would never have. His mind felt uneasy, running too fast her to quite comprehend, Bad Wolf augments or no. He surely could see the timelines bending around the three of them in ways she couldn't even imagine.

Her husband was gasping a bit for breath when he finally spoke. "Eleven years, two months, eight days and three point six hours." He looked at Rose with a smile, "Two children, a baby TARDIS, and a house with doors as well. No carpets or mortgage though — we're rather well off at that." He jammed his hands in the pockets of his khakis and smiled smugly at the alien who had given Rose up.

"Still rude and not ginger, just like me." The Time Lord laughed, but that turned into a cough, and swirls of golden light crept through the gaps between his fingers as he covered his mouth with his hand.

"You're dying again!" Rose cried out, suddenly terrified.

"Oi, I just breeze through these faces like nothing, don't I? I…you've only got twelve you know!" Rose looked at her husband and the lines in his forehead revealed just how worried he really was for the other Doctor.

A sorrowful laugh creaked out of the throat of the Time Lord. "She gave me more, you know, gave me all of hers left. I don't know if I'll ever die now." His eyes were dry, but Rose was very suspicious that the only reason he wasn't crying is because he had no tears left in him.

"Who did, Doctor? Who gave you more.."

"River Song," the human Doctor whispered, his eyes wide. "She really did know your name, was going to be….?"

Rose blinked, a flash of jealousy flaring bright in her mind before both she and her Wolf crushed it under a mental heel. She remembered the other wolf. The voice that laid claim to one Doctor, while assuring her that the man who would become her husband was hers. She'd always wondered if her dream was a fantasy of her quasi-regeneration, or seeing within the Bad Wolf. Now she knew. "River Song, your wife, she was a Time Lady?"

The Time Lord smiled sadly, looking at her with green eyes that she instantly recognizes and yet are completely unfamiliar. "You always were terribly brilliant, Rose Tyler." He sighed softly.

"Yes, River Song, through a series of incredible events, was a bit of a Time Lady. The very last one. And yes, she's…she was my wife." His voice was hoarse and he coughed golden sparks again. Rose could feel the wolf respond to the flavor of that energy, whimpering sadly on the edges of her soul as the Doctor muttered sadly, "My wonderful, mad, backwards wife."

"…who I…you…we met the day she died," her Doctor blurted out and Rose glared at her husband for being rude once again, but she already knew the story. Her dream and that fractured tale had given her hope that the Time Lord who'd left her on that beach in Bad Wolf Bay would not be entirely alone once Donna was gone.

The fully-Time Lord Doctor turned an oddly exultant smile at them both as his eyes glittered that unknown green. "Yes, but you see, I'd already seen the ending — the part that breaks me. It let me revel in the rest, the juicy middle, the rapturously clever and horrible beginning. It let me love her, because I had already thought I lost her. But I haven't lost all of her."

In a burst of frenetic energy, he unslung the backpack he'd been wearing and placed it on to the sandy ground with infinite care, like it contained the most precious items in the universe.

Perhaps it did. His fingers went to the zip — long fingers that were different and yet eerily similar to those of her husband.

Her husband had other things on his mind. "Where did you ever find a backpack in the shape of your TARDIS?"

Rose blinked and yes, in fact, the backpack was a blue police box. "Oh, we're terribly famous on Starvane VI, I'll have you know. They seem to be rather immune to perception filters and River and I did manage to cure that nasty plague and defeat those terrorists in one fell swoop!" The new new new Doctor's eyes darted over to their own TARDIS, sitting unimaginative in the distance as a large reddish boulder. "Oh, your chameleon circuits are still working! Brilliant! Still I wouldn't give up my beautiful blue box for all the tea on Starvane VI!"

Rose felt a pang — she missed her old TARDIS with a visceral pain, and she knew her Doctor still had nightmares of the wrenching pain of losing his oldest, dearest partner. He said that she was worth the loss, but the new TARDIS just didn't feel the same. Her husband reached out to take her hand, his eyes still locked on the contents of that backpack.

Another cough and a deep steadying breath, and the Time Lord looked up at them with a smile like a magician revealing his greatest, most magnificent trick. He pulled a cube of glowing blue out of the pack on the dusty ground. He held it reverently, lovingly, and everywhere his fingers touched, swirls of light seemed to stroke at his fingers in sad whorls and spirals. Rose was mesmerized. In the back of her mind she swore she heard deep feminine laughter, achingly sad — yet not without the slightly trace of hope and curiosity.

Rose saw a trace of awe in the tears that finally escape from the corner of this Doctor's eyes. "This, this is my wife. This is River Song."

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