Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. I do not own anything, nor do I get paid for it.

A/N Thanks for the lovely response on the last chapter. Lots of things happening in this chapter.

I have rearranged the lines for the Zagreus rhyme for convenience in this chapter. There are spoilers for Neverland and Zagreus as well as the Divergent Arc.

Happy Reading!

Chapter Fifteen

The Doctor's groan of pain was muffled into the pillow, and it was the scent of the pillow that was successful in rousing him. In that, the scent didn't belong to him at all, and neither did the bed, which he realised when he sat up in it and looked around. Bit by bit, the information trickled back into his brain.

They had just made the breach into the rift, and it had not been an easy journey to get there. Their latest efforts near the breach had been exhausting, and the Doctor's job had been the toughest one of them all. His mind and body were still smarting from the lingering pain of what he had accomplished, and in his near catatonic state of exhaustion, he had accidentally made his way to Rose's room rather than his own. His time senses told him that he had been passed out for twenty one whole hours, an eternity for a Time Lord. It was a wonder his Commanders hadn't come knocking yet, but considering that his brain was still putting together the pieces of the last time he had seen them, he wasn't sure how many of them were still alive.

He fell back on Rose's bed and closed his eyes, trying to focus so that he could gather his memories and lift the fog of confusion from his brain. The lingering scent of Rose on the bed was more distracting than anything, but it soothed his agitation faster than probably even the zero room could have. He cast his mind back to saying goodbye to Rose, and let his mind reconstruct the events following it.

The first few days had been irksome. It involved far too much waiting on the Doctor's part and his natural tendency of impatience did him no favours. It wouldn't have been as bad if the waiting had meant lack of action, but this kind of waiting involved him staying in safety while the soldiers marched to their inevitable doom.

The Lord General wasn't to engage in skirmishes, the Lord General couldn't be in the vanguard for the smaller battles, the Lord General shouldn't have nearly regenerated from being too close to the point of impact of the Daleks' energy weapons. Several other such rules followed but he had given up on trying to remember them all. He wasn't about to sit safely inside his TARDIS with the shields up while his troops ran headfirst into battle. The rules of combat could go hang, as he regularly reminded his Commanders who were perpetually exasperated at their General.

It was only as they approached the rift that the Doctor started to think more strategically rather than foolheartedly. The rift would be complicated to maneuver and it had been precisely for that reason that the Daleks had chosen the heart of it as a base. He knew from his experience in the Matrix that this was thought to house the majority of the Dalek power, perhaps even the Emperor himself. If he succeeded in this, then the war would surely end. All his Commanders seemed to think so, as did Narvin and Braxiatel. The Doctor wished he could be this optimistic but his instincts were all wrong right now. He sometimes wished he had taken Rose's advice and recuperated better from his time with the Nightmare Child.

The waiting game began again when they reached the outer perimeter of the rift. Crossing into an unstable time rift with seven TARDISes and a fleet of Time Stations was far from an easy feat. The technicians were hard at work, trying to find the perfect part to breach and the precise time to do it. Meanwhile, they were being bombarded by Dalek attacks constantly. There wasn't a chance he could authorise the use of a delta wave or an energy weapon this close to an unstable rift, which meant they were using good old-fashioned temporal warfare to fight them.

The seven Commanders under him had formed their TARDISes into a seven pointed star around the Time Station containing the technicians. Each TARDIS was guarded by at least five Time Stations which contained the soldiers from the war looms aboard them. It was the Doctor's TARDIS, the oldest and the sturdiest of them all, that had created a temporal vacuum. The Doctor and his TARDIS were just a minute out of sync with the rest of the troops and would traverse through the vortex, anticipating attacks and guiding their troops like a silent assassin gliding through the night. The vortex became a weapon in itself, turning into a fluid ball that the Doctor and the TARDIS then shaped and reshaped.

Time became almost meaningless to the Doctor after he had begun. People became just a blur, death and destruction just a sound in the background. He could mould time, harden it to fix a possibility or make it collapse if the outcome wasn't favourable. The TARDIS trampled harshly through the vacuum, binding the vortex that had always bound her and letting her pilot manipulate it.

When the rift was finally breached, the Doctor could scarcely believe what he had pulled off. He had single-handedly prevented the utter annihilation of his troops and destroyed every attacking Dalek force by using the vortex to do it. He felt exhilarated, almost free for the first time since he had looked into the Untempered Schism at the age of eight. He was built for this, he realised. No other Time Lord would have had enough telepathic resilience to bond with a ship as old as his TARDIS. No one else could have bound the vortex to do their bidding and manipulate it like he had done. No one else would have been capable of doing what he did.

It was then that the exhaustion had hit, and it had hit both him and the TARDIS in equal measure. He had barely managed to materialise on one of the surviving Time Stations before stumbling to the closest room and more importantly, the closest bed which had turned out to be Rose's.

His mind having focused properly, the Doctor got out of the bed and checked himself for any physical injuries, though he knew that there wouldn't be any. He was still feeling quite jubilant at having successfully made the breach, but the jubilance lasted only until he stepped outside the TARDIS and was handed a list of the dead. All seven Commanders had survived but they had lost a few dozen Lieutenants and countless soldiers from the war looms. More bad news followed in that the base which was supposed to hold the majority of Dalek power was utterly empty.

"They were destroyed?" asked the Doctor sharply.

"No, my lord," said his first Commander, Lady Trevilik. "It is in disrepair. The Daleks haven't been there in quite some time."

"So the intelligence was wrong," said the Doctor, gritting his teeth in frustration.

"Appears so, my lord," said Lady Trevilik. "Should I order the troops to search it regardless?"

"Yes," he said. "No, wait," he shook his head. "I will lead the search."

"My lord," began Lady Trevilik in a tone that preceded a lecture about protocol.

"Lady Trevilik, you are my first Commander and I have tremendous respect for you, but if I required your opinion on every move that I make, I would ask for it," he snapped, fixing her with a cold look.

Lady Trevilik's face shut down. "Yes, my lord," she said. "How many will you require with you?"

"One Lieutenant and ten soldiers," he answered, raising his eyebrow when Lady Trevilik opened her mouth, presumably to tell him that the number was too low.

"As you command, Lord General," she said, looking none too pleased about it. "Will there be anything else?"

"Not for now," said the Doctor shortly. "You will hold down the troops here. I doubt there are Daleks in the vicinity but if they somehow get through the breach, well, all Time Stations have excellent weaponry, so it would be like shooting fish in a barrel, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, my lord," she said, though she looked confused at the strange phrase. "Lieutenant Qynokos will suffice, shall he?"

The Doctor nodded curtly and went back into his TARDIS, leaving the door open for Lieutenant Qynokos and his soldiers to follow. They did so, bowing their head in respect at him as they filed in. The Doctor gave an absent nod of acknowledgment before setting the TARDIS to make a short hop to the deserted Dalek base. Lieutenant Qynokos had looked at the console once, presumably to ask permission to help pilot it, but the Doctor's cold look had been enough to deter him.

As Lady Trevilik had informed him, the base was indeed completely deserted. There were no obvious signs of foul play and the Doctor did not expect any to be found, though he didn't voice that aloud when Lieutenant Qynokos ordered the soldiers to start scanning every inch of the base.

He was proven wrong when every scanner lit up immediately, signalling the presence of the most dreaded phenomenon a Time Lord could encounter.

"What is it?" asked the Doctor when he saw the horror on their faces.

Lieutenant Qynokos looked nearly green when he turned to the Doctor. "Anti-time, my lord."

"Emergency dematerialisation, all of you," ordered the Doctor at once.

"What about you, Lord Doctor?" asked Qynokos at once as the soldiers drew out their Time Rings.

"I will follow in my TARDIS. Go back to Lady Trevilik and sound the warning. Now!" he shouted and the Lieutenant and his soldiers dematerialised quickly from the empty base.

Satisfied, the Doctor started back towards his TARDIS but before he could get there, a hologram popped up, startling him. The woman in the hologram was facing the Doctor, and appeared to be looking straight at him.

"Hello Doctor," she said, in an accent that one would equate to an American accent from Earth.

The Doctor's eyes went wide when he recognised her. "Perfection," he said. "Impossible."

"Impossible is just a word, Doctor," she said, grinning coyly at him. "You ought to know."

"You can't be here, this isn't possible," said the Doctor in disbelief.

"You are perhaps wondering how I am here," said Perfection, making him realise that she couldn't actually hear him and was just a hologram. "The last time we met, you left me behind in a universe without time. With Daqar Keep, of all people. We actually came to a truce after you left, you know. A truce that was recently broken."

"Where is Zagreus?" asked the Doctor, cold fury in his voice. "Is he still you?"

"I am not Zagreus, Doctor, if that's what you're thinking," said Perfection airily, and the Doctor realised that the hologram was responding to his words. "Well, not anymore, I should say. He took a different body, a stronger body. He even restored this one for me. A facet of him, he calls me. But, I am wasting my time with such chatter. I'll just get to the point, shall I?"

"Please do," said the Doctor, through gritted teeth.

"You should really study your history, you know," said Perfection with a cold, dazzling smile. "How does it go again? Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, blah blah blah…" she rolled her eyes. "Do you know what the important lines are, Doctor? Zagreus at the end of days, Zagreus lies all other ways, Zagreus sets the skies ablaze, The stars his flame a gleaming…"

The Doctor's hearts froze in his chest.

Perfection laughed her beautiful tinkling laugh that held no warmth. "The King is here, Doctor, and he seeks his army of Never-Weres. Now everyone shall bow."

"Alright, what about Kragni then?" asked Rose.

"Relegated to Section Gamma, my lady," said Eliana, checking the records on the mainframe. "His SER is back at 100."

"Good," said Rose, satisfied. "Defences still holding strong?"

"Yes, my lady," answered Skelton. "I have also brought you the audio recordings of Kragni's first Lieutenant like you requested."

"Thank you, Skelton," said Rose, picking up the data crystals and entering her energy signature into it. Keyed as it was now, only she would be able to hear it once the recording started playing. Headphones without actual headphones. "I'll take these to my quarters. I think I need an hour or so to rest."

Skelton and Eliana both nodded in acknowledgement as Rose went to her quarters with the recordings. She wasn't all that tired, but she knew she focused better if she was lying comfortably in bed when listening to those recordings. It had become something of a habit to her, and her two young charges had realised that quite early on and would leave her undisturbed.

Having acquainted herself very well with the Travesties and their history, she had now turned her attention to their associates. After the initial tension of her first few months on Shada, things had settled down, if only a little. They had isolated the Travesties, and kept them away from the recent prisoners with the excess Artron energy and the new shielding that Eliana had crafted was working wonders to bring the SER down. She had talked to Braxiatel again a week ago, and he had been pleased with her progress.

Time had seemed to have gone by in quite a weird fashion lately, and Rose was no longer certain how long she had been on Shada. Even the rudimentary time sense she had discovered she possessed during her years in Torchwood's dungeons would not help her. She had given up trying to keep up with it a while ago, and was doing her best to educate herself on everything about Shada and the Travesties.

With a sigh, she pulled off her boots and fell onto the small bed. Lifting the first data crystal up, she closed her eyes and began to listen.

"Seeks an army?" mocked the Doctor. "What is he going to do? Go and ask the Time Lords to gather in a single file and enter the chamber containing the Oubliette of Eternity one at a time?"

"If it is a demonstration of his power you want, it is a demonstration you shall get, Doctor," said Perfection. "Do you want to know what really happened to this base?"

The blank mainframe screens around the base lit up with the same recording. It showed the very room that they were standing in now, but it was full of Daleks, going about their business.

"OPEN-ING RIFT!"

A low thrum was heard through the base following the Dalek's command, and the Doctor realised that the Daleks had foolishly opened the wrong gateway. The rift wasn't unstable by coincidence; it had been made so due to the fact that it contained the gateway to the Divergent Universe.

In the control room, grey shadows that could turn almost completely invisible and walk through solid surfaces began to surround the Daleks. The Doctor watched in disgust as a single touch of those beings made the Daleks scream and scream until the tops of their Dalekanium covers shot open and the being inside melted into viscous, black matter.

The Daleks died screaming in agony and the recording cut off abruptly, as Perfection spoke once more.

"You see, so easy," she said.

"Those Neverpeople," said the Doctor. "How could they do that?"

"Anti Time is poison to everyone, Doctor and Neverpeople thrive in temporal chaos as wonderful as this Time War," she said airily. "There were only a few of us who could come through from the Divergent Universe and the gateway has now sealed itself. But once our King has his army, well...this war should soon be over, shouldn't it? The end of Daleks and the end of Time Lords, just like Zagreus always wanted."

"And where does your King," he spat the word in disgust. "...plan to get his army?"

"The same place he got his last army from," said Perfection, her smile sinister. "Where the Time Lords choose to throw away their own once they become too powerful or too broken or too dangerous."

The Doctor's hearts went cold and Perfection burst into laughter that echoed around the empty base.

"Shada, Doctor!" she shouted in triumph. "SHADA!"

"Do you think we should say something?" asked Skelton, once Rose had retired to her quarters.

"Are you sure you read the tradition, right?" asked Eliana, raising her eyebrows sceptically.

"I think so, though I am uncertain about the regional differences," said Skelton. "One part of her Earth believes that it ought to be the paper anniversary while the other thinks it's cotton."

"Show me that," snapped Eliana, pushing him away and looking at the screen. "Skelton, these are for wedding anniversaries," she said in an exasperated voice.

"Oh," he said. "Do you think it still holds true if it is an anniversary of her arrival?"

Eliana sighed. "I knew this was a bad idea," she said. "Besides, I doubt she knows that it has been a year since she arrived on Shada. Well, a year by her standards at least."

"Earth years are odd, aren't they?" asked Skelton. "365 rotations of their planet around their star. Only one star."

"There are places in the universe where a planet revolves around five stars and you find this fascinating?" asked Eliana, rolling her eyes.

"You don't find anything fascinating," snapped Skelton sulkily.

"Oh do stop acting like a child, Skelton," said Eliana in a long-suffering tone. "You are one hundred and twenty years old, not a toddler of eighty."

"At least I don't...did you hear that?" Skelton turned around abruptly to look towards the doors that led to the chambers holding the cells.

"Sound strategy, Skelton," said Eliana with an air of superiority. "Try and distract me because you can't think of a better argument."

"Shh," he hissed at her. "I told you I heard something."

"The alerts would have sounded if there were intruders, Skelton," said Eliana, casting an almost lazy look at the mainframe. "Perhaps you need rest if you are hearing things," she added as she moved towards the doors with an exaggerated look of caution on her face.

Skelton turned away from the mainframe and glared at her but the glare vanished when he saw something shimmer in the air behind Eliana. "Eliana, move!" he shouted.

"What? Why?" The words were barely out of her mouth when her body seemed to vanish entirely, leaving a greyish shadow behind.

Skelton stumbled back, terror seizing his hearts. He fumbled shakily with the hand held scanner he was holding and nearly screamed when he saw what the being consisted of.

"Skeltonoquirisuen," hissed Eliana's voice that now echoed hollowly around the dome. "Do not be afraid. The Neverpeople will not harm you."

"Stay away from me," said Skelton, wishing he was close enough to the mainframe to raise the alarm, but in his moment of fear, he had moved away from it, not towards. He knew that screaming would be futile since the Lady Commander was listening to the recordings and would not hear him. "You are not the Neverpeople, so do not insult my intelligence."

"You do not think we are the Neverpeople, little child?" asked an amused female voice that held the same hollow quality as Eliana's voice, but sounded older.

"You register of Anti Time but Neverpeople were created by the Oubliette of Eternity, not by touch," said Skelton, using his babbling to at least try and distract the intruders.

"Such a smart young boy," said the same older female voice. "You are right, of course. The Oubliette of Eternity made the Neverpeople, but it was Zagreus who gave us this power. Once, we could only feed on temporal beings but now we can absorb them with a touch and gather them for our King's army. And where better to come and recruit an army but Shada?"

Skelton started shaking at the implication. If it had taken them one touch to take Eliana, they could take every being on Shada within hours. He racked his brain to think of something, anything that could help stop them, when the idea struck. It was an insane plan and he was certain that had Eliana still been alive she would have mocked him for the stupidity and risk involved with it.

But Eliana was dead, absorbed by the Anti Time and under the influence of the Neverpeople and Zagreus too, if they were to be believed. Skelton was out of options. He took a moment to loosen the knot of his silver charm and let it fall to the floor. This was the only way his insane plan would work.

"So, you want to absorb me into your army?" he asked, his voice tinged with the reckless madness that filled his very being in terror of what he was about to do. "Come and get me then!"

He turned around and ran towards the far end of the dome where his doom awaited. He could feel the amusement emanating from the Neverpeople at what they thought was a foolish gesture, but he heard Eliana's voice hiss just as he reached his destination. Within a moment, the Neverpeople were upon him.

"Stay back," he shouted, his hand on the chamber's door. "You know the range on this thing and I don't suppose you want to go through the same thing twice."

"Do not be foolish, Skelton," hissed Eliana. "The Oubliette will disperse you back to the universe of Anti Time. Join us, and you needn't be subjected to a life of pain and loneliness."

"If I activate this, then I get dispersed, which means I was never born," said Skelton, a mad glint appearing in his eyes. "I would rather live alone in a universe of Anti Time of my own accord than become a perversion such as you and serve a master like Zagreus. This is my last warning, move back or I will take you back to that hell with me."

The shadows retreated, but not completely, presumably thinking that he would move away too. Skelton, however, was hoping for just that. With a quick flick of his wrist, the chamber opened and he activated it. The Neverpeople howled but Skelton did not hear them over his own screams as his entire existence was wiped from time.

The Doctor was a force to be reckoned with as he piloted the TARDIS to Shada. Perfection's words rang in his ears, and he feared for Rose's safety. In the moments that it took for him to get to Shada, he spared a thought for how long it must have been for Rose. He still wasn't certain how long it had taken for them to make the breach into the rift. It could have been days, months or even years since they had parted ways and he had no time to stop and check before he materialised on Shada.

He had ordered the rest of them back to Pazithi Gallifreya, a neutral ground where a protective barrier had already been erected for the returning troops to be examined for Anti Time. The Doctor knew that the Neverpeople could assume the appearance of anyone, and the last thing they needed was letting them past the transduction barrier on Gallifrey. The Doctor himself had refused to be put under quarantine and was marching to Shada to find Rose, a decision that had earned the ire of all his Commanders and the War Council on Gallifrey. But he was beyond the point of caring.

When the TARDIS did eventually materialise on Shada, he burst through the doors immediately, without waiting to check for potential attackers lying in wait. What he did find was Rose, peacefully asleep in her bed. He came to an abrupt halt, staring at the sight before him in disbelief which soon gave way to relief. He wondered briefly how the sound of the TARDIS hadn't woken her up when he saw the glowing data crystal on her pillow, and he almost laughed at the absurdity of the fact that she had fallen asleep listening to it, and the noise-cancelling data crystal had prevented her from hearing the TARDIS.

He moved towards her cautiously, and touched her arm gently to rouse her. It worked almost too well, and Rose shot up in bed, her eyes going wide at the sight of him. He smiled tentatively at her and she relaxed almost instantly, before turning the data crystal off.

"Hello," he said, smiling despite himself. It had been far too long since he had seen her, and he realised that he had missed her quite a lot in that time.

"Hello," she returned just as quickly and then leaned forward to touch his right heart cautiously. "You're here," she said, her voice tinged with wonder.

He placed his hand on top of hers on his heart. "Yes," he said, his smile widening.

That was all it took for her to launch herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck as she squeezed him tightly in a hug. He stiffened for only a moment before pulling her even closer until she was practically in his lap. The scent from her hair permeated his senses, and he realised that this was the saturated version of the scent that he had woken up to after his ordeal with breaching the rift. He brushed the hair away from her neck with his nose and nuzzled her pulse point softly.

Rose froze at the intimate act and pulled away slowly, but only enough to look him in the eye. "How long?" she asked.

The answer came automatically, all his time senses focusing suddenly. "392 days," he answered. "You?"

"364 days," she said, looking just as surprised as him that the answer had come so quickly after being elusive for a long time.

"Oh, Rose," he murmured.

"Yeah," she said quickly. "Me too."

The Doctor smiled and his gaze shifted down to her lips before moving back to her eyes, and Rose held her breath as he leaned forward slowly. Their noses brushed and he nuzzled it softly, his eyes falling close. Rose's eyes fell shut only moments later but before their lips could touch, a loud alert sounded around them.

Rose jumped away from him and climbed off his lap before running out of her quarters. The Doctor blinked in surprise and followed her moments later, realising for the first time that he had landed directly in her quarters. Rose ran down the silver spiral stairs and towards the mainframe in the dome. The intruder alarm was ringing loudly and the Doctor watched in surprise as Rose entered the codes expertly and turned it off. Silence fell over the dome again, and the Doctor sighed in relief.

"I should recheck these damn alerts," said Rose grumpily as she pushed the buttons moodily. "They were five minutes too late."

"I assume it was my TARDIS landing in your room that did it," said the Doctor, looking slightly apologetic.

"Yeah," said Rose, running diagnostics on the mainframe with well-practised ease. "Apparently it's bad form to land in the Lady Commander's quarters directly."

"Shouldn't there be a technician to turn it off?" asked the Doctor, leaning against the conference table and watching Rose work.

She turned around and shook her head. "No one here but me," she said.

He looked surprised. "You're on your own?" he asked.

"Have been since you dropped me off here," she shrugged. "Why?"

"That's unusual," he said, looking around the dome and registering the silence in a whole another light now. "How did you know what to do then?"

"I had to bring the Stasis Energy Readings down for the Travesties," said Rose, in an absent tone. "Some extra defence shields did the work, before the link between prisoners with excess Artron energy and the rising SER levels was found. Since then, the Travesties have been isolated and the levels are going down."

"And you knew this how?" asked the Doctor again, the unnerving feeling growing more intense.

Rose opened her mouth to answer but then stopped. "Huh," she said. "I-I don't know."

The Doctor walked up to her. "Rose, what's the last thing you remember?" he asked, doing his best to sound calm.

"Going to bed," she said at once. "I was listening to the recordings about the Travesties and I must have fallen asleep."

"Was there anyone else here with you?" he asked, still in that same calm voice.

"No," she said, though she sounded unsure. "There hasn't been anyone here with me, with the exception of Lieutenant Nixyce who drops off the prisoners every few days."

The Doctor felt the bottom of his stomach drop, but a beep from the mainframe drew Rose's attention away. She checked the alert and her gasp brought the Doctor out of his shock.

"What is it?" he asked.

Rose was trembling lightly, her mouth open. "It-It's empty," she said finally. "Shada's empty."

A/N That was a difficult chapter to write because I was jumping between so many things at once. Let me know what you thought of it.

The next chapter will be up on Saturday. See you then!