Notes: Sorry about the delay, but after two exams, I'll be officially done school! I'm going to try not to rush through the next few story arcs and do them proper justice, but I am a little over excited about what I've got half written already for the 50th rewrite. So enjoy the Rings of Akhaten and next comes Ice Warriors!

The Doctor rushed his family to some seats to watch the main event of the festival. They were a little bit late and had to be very quiet as they sat on the crowded benches.

"Is that the little girl you befriended earlier?" River asked Clara telepathically.

"Yup. She said she's the Queen of Years and has to sing a special song. What does that mean?" she wondered.

"The texts are always a bit vague about the whole thing. Hopefully, nothing too bad," River replied.

Merry looked back at Clara nervously for a moment when she was positioned on the pedestal in front of everyone, facing the golden pyramid. Clara smiled at her encouragingly, and she turned to sing her song toward the pyramid and the sun. Her song was beautiful and they all listened while the Doctor explained telepathically what was happening. He couldn't communicate directly with River and Clara, but Jamie relayed it along to them.

"They're singing to the Mummy in the Temple. They call it the Old God. Sometimes Grandfather. It's called The Long Song. A lullaby without end to feed the Old God. Keep him asleep. It's been going for millions of years, chorister handing over to chorister, generation after generation after generation."

They watched as everyone around them suddenly held out various personal objects. Before their eyes, the items disappeared in a glitter of golden sparkles.

"What was that?" Clara questioned her family silently.

"Something we should have done to take part. Everyone brings offerings to the festival, gifts with personal value, to offer to the Old God," River explained.

Everyone paused, nearly stopped breathing, and the singers went silent, when there was a terrifying rumble from the pyramid. Suddenly, Merry was lifted from her place by a bright beam of energy and pulled through space toward the golden structure.

"Okay, what's happening? Is that supposed to happen?" Clara questioned aloud.

"Help!" Merry cried.

The Doctor started to march angrily back to Dor'een to rent a moped after all, but James grasped his arm.

"Hang on, dad. We can get over there with this," he insisted, pulling a vortex manipulator from his pocket. It never hurt to have the option, even if they rarely used it. James quickly programmed the coordinates as he glanced at their target, experience over his years of travelling without a TARDIS giving him an advantage over his parents. "Grab on."

The Doctor, Rose, River, and Clara all placed a hand over the device and, in a flash of blue light, they found themselves just outside of a large, heavy, solidly closed, stone door. Rose and the Doctor staggered a bit, less used to travel without a capsule than their offspring.

"Merry!" Clara gasped as she pounded uselessly against the door.

By the time the Doctor and Rose had regained their equilibrium, James and River were already scanning the door for the controls.

"Looks like an acoustic lock. They literally sing it open," River informed them.

"The key changes ten million zillion squillion times a second," James added.

"Can you open it?" Clara pleaded with her parents.

James and River looked doubtfully at each other, then towards the Doctor. He dusted himself off and straightened his bow tie before scanning the door with his own sonic.

"Well?" Rose prompted.

"Technically, no. In reality, also no, but still, let's give it a stab," he answered and started modulating frequencies on his sonic.

"How can they just stand there and watch?" Clara questioned, her eyes damp.

"This is what they expected to happen. This is what always happens to the Queen of Years," River told her.

"But she's a child!" Clara argued.

"And he's a god. Well, he is to them, anyway. They feed him sacrifices so that he leaves them alone," River explained.

"How can you be ok with this, mother?" Clara demanded.

"I'm not, otherwise we wouldn't be here trying to save her and stop the cycle, sweetheart," River insisted.

"Enough, you two! Clara, she was telling you how they justify it for themselves, not her own opinion on the matter. We will stop this, and these people will not have to sacrifice anyone again," Rose assured her.

"Anything, dad?" James asked worriedly.

"Yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, hello!" the Doctor exclaimed.

"Hello what?" Clara asked.

"The sonic's locked on to the acoustic tumblers," he replied.

"That's good, yeah?" Rose hoped.

"Yup! Means I get to do this," he said as he dramatically raised the stone door, seemingly pushing it upwards with his sonic. He stood beneath it as the others rushed through to help Merry.

"Hello there. I'm the Doctor, and you've met Clara. She was supposed to be having a nice day out. Still, it's early yet. Are you coming, then? Did I mention that the door is immensely heavy?" he rambled at the little girl who was staring at them, clearly terrified.

"Leave. You'll wake him," she warned them.

"Really quite extraordinarily heavy," the Doctor added as he fell to his knees, struggling with the door. Rose moved to help him and tied her sonic to match what his was doing as they both held the door.

There was still one man in the room, singing to the mummy enclosed in a glass case. He nervously continued his chanting despite the intrusion.

"Merry, we need to leave," Clara told her and tried to urge her out of the pyramid.

"No. Go away!" Merry shouted angrily.

"Not without you," Clara insisted.

"You said I wouldn't get it wrong and then I got it wrong. And now this has happened. Look what happened!" Merry cried.

"You didn't get it wrong," Clara assured her.

"You really didn't," River added when she saw the girl about to protest. "There was never a way that this was going to end safely for you. But we are here to help so that you and all of the future people here are not sacrificed anymore."

"How do you know? You don't know anything. You have to go! Go now, or he'll eat us all," Merry argued.

"Well, he's ugly. But you know, to be honest, I don't think he looks big enough," Clara said teasingly, to lighten the mood a little.

"Not our meat, our souls," she corrected. "He doesn't want you. He wants me. If you don't leave, he'll eat you all up too."

"Yes, and you don't want that, do you? You want us to walk out of this really quite astonishingly heavy door and never come back?" the Doctor asked her still struggling to hold open the stone barrier with Rose.

"Yes."

"I see. Right. Clara's right. Absolutely never going to happen," the Doctor told her and grasped his wife's hand to pull her out with him in a forward roll before the stone slammed shut behind them.

"Did you just lock us in with the soul eating monster?" Clara asked incredulously.

"Yep," he replied as he straightened his tie.

"And is there actually a way to get out?" Clara wondered hopefully.

"What? Before it eats our souls?"

"Ideally, yes," Clara replied.

"There is still this," James interrupted, holding up his vortex manipulator. "But it doesn't exactly solve that problem."

"Love, out of curiosity, why is he still singing?" Rose asked, nodding toward the man singing to the mummy.

The man glanced at them nervously as he kept chanting, "Old God, rest your weary, holy head."

"He's trying to sing the Old God back to sleep, but that's not going to happen. He's waking up, mate. He's coming, ready or not. You want to run," the Doctor explained. The man abruptly stopped and stood, looking at the intruders. "That's it, then. Song's over," the Doctor concluded.

"The song is over. My name is Chorister Rezh Baphix, and the Long Song ended with me," he announced before pressing a button on his bracelet and teleporting away.

"That's it, then. Song's over," the Doctor repeated.

Everyone flinched as the mummy in the glass case roared loudly and rose from the throne it had been placed upon.

"Ah ha! Look at that," the Doctor shouted excitedly.

"Yeah, not exactly something to be happy about, love," Rose said, clasping his hand as they watched the creature start to beat on the glass enclosure.

"You've woken him," Merry cried fearfully.

"No, we didn't wake him. And you didn't wake him, either. He's waking because it's his time to wake, and feed. On you, apparently. On your stories," the Doctor explained.

"She didn't say stories. She said souls," Clara argued. She would be more than happy to tell it some stories if it would leave them alone, but wasn't too keen on handing over her soul.

"That's just it, Clara, don't you see? What makes you who you are? Your soul isn't physical, it's your thoughts, your memories. We are who we are because of our experiences," James told his daughter.

"Exactly! The soul's made of stories, not atoms. Everything that ever happened to us. People we love, people we lost. People we found again against all the odds. He threatens to wake, they offer him a pure soul. The soul of the Queen of Years," the Doctor agreed.

"Granddad! Stop it. You're scaring her," Clara argued.

"Good. She should be scared."

"Doctor!" Rose gasped.

"She's sacrificing herself. She should know what that means. Do you know what it means, Merry?" he continued.

"A god chose me," she told them, reciting what she had been taught her whole life.

"But, Merry, it's not a god. It'll feed on your soul, but that doesn't make it a god. It is a vampire, and you don't need to give yourself to it," River insisted.

"Hey, do you mind if I tell you a story?" the Doctor said suddenly, kneeling down to look her in the eyes. "One you might not have heard. All the elements in your body were forged many, many millions of years ago, in the heart of a far away star that exploded and died. That explosion scattered those elements across the desolations of deep space. After so, so many millions of years, these elements came together to form new stars and new planets. And on and on it went. The elements came together and burst apart, forming shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings. Until eventually, they came together to make you. You are unique in the universe. There is only one Merry Gejelh. And there will never be another. Getting rid of that existence isn't a sacrifice. It is a waste."

"So, if I don't, then everyone else-?" Merry asked.

"Will be just fine, sweetheart," Rose assured her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

"How?" she wondered, tears gleaming in her wide eyes.

"There's always a way," he assured her.

"You promise?" she pleaded, not willing to allow everyone else to die for her sake.

"Cross my hearts," he told her, making an X over both hearts.

There was a rumbling noise from outside as the mummy began to crack through the glass imprisoning it.

"Sounds like company," River warned, pointing her blaster at the mummy, but keeping watch around them for more.

"The Vigil," Merry told them, clearly knowing what was coming for her.

"And what's the Vigil?" Rose prompted.

"If the Queen of Years is unwilling to be feasted upon," Merry began, gulping nervously.

"Yes?" James asked.

"It's their job to feed her to Grandfather," she explained.

A cloud of black smoke formed in front of the door and three dark robots appeared. They stepped ominously toward Merry.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," the little girl pleaded, backing away from them, but frighteningly toward the growling mummy.

"Stay back! I'm armed. With a screwdriver," the Doctor told them.

"Go build a cabinet, I've got this," River told him stepping in front of all of them in defence as she pointed her sonic blaster directly at the robots.

The lead robot in the Vigil lifted its hand to send an acoustic blast that knocked the gun from River's hand. A second attack from all of them sent the whole family violently against the wall.

A quick telepathic discussion between the Doctor and Rose had them both using their sonics to block the attacks any further. But, they were all backed into a corner nonetheless.

"You know all the stories. You must know if there's another way out," Clara urged Merry to help them.

"There's a tale. A secret song. The Thief of the Temple and the Nimmer's Door," Merry told her as she tried to remember all of the stories she had learned.

"And the secret songs open the secret door? How does it go? Can you sing it?" Clara pleaded.

The Queen of Years sang a quick little melody and a smaller door slid open beside them. Everyone rushed out of the pyramid, but the Vigil stopped advancing and disappeared. As the mummy broke free of the glass enclosure, a bright light flashed toward the nearby sun.

"Where did they go?" Clara asked regarding the Vigil.

"Grandfather's awake. They're of no function any more," the Doctor reasoned.

"Well, you could sound happier about it," Clara told him as he still seemed quite worried about the situation.

"Actually, I think I may have made a bit of a tactical boo-boo. More of a semantics mix-up, really," the Doctor admitted.

"What boo-boo?" Clara asked.

"The thing in the pyramid wasn't the god. It was there to awaken the Old God," River explained as they all stared at the sun, which was becoming more and more active.

"That is a very big god," Rose commented, taking her husband's hand and letting their bracelets click together.

"Oh, my stars. What do we do?" Clara asked her grandparents.

"Against that? I don't know. Do you know? I don't know. Any ideas?" he questioned his family.

"But you promised. You promised!" Merry argued.

"I did. I did promise," the Doctor agreed, wracking his magnificent brain for a plan.

"He'll eat us all. He'll spread across the system, consuming the Seven Worlds. And when there's no more to eat, he'll embark on a new odyssey among the stars," Merry told them, remembering the warnings she had been taught.

"I say leg it," Clara suggested.

"Leg it where, exactly?" the Doctor asked frustratedly.

"Marbella in 1989?" Rose suggested.

The Doctor gaped for a moment as a thought came to him at the memory. "Rose Tyler, you are a genius."

"Yeah, you'd better not be tricking me into leaving when you say that this time," she responded.

He kissed her quickly and said, "Absolutely not. I need you for this. However, I do want you to get this young lady to safety," he told Clara, entrusting her with taking Merry back where the audience was watching.

"But I want to help!" Clara argued.

"You are helping, sweetheart. We all have a role to play in this and yours is to keep her safe so that we can focus on that," Rose told her.

James attached the vortex manipulator to his daughter's wrist and programmed it to return them to the exact spot that they left before teleporting to the pyramid.

"It's really big," Clara commented, worrying about her family fighting the sun.

"I've seen bigger," the Doctor replied.

"Really?" Clara gasped.

"Are you joking? It's massive," he answered.

"And we will be fine. He has a plan," Rose assured her, though she didn't know what his plan was yet, she could feel his confidence that this would work.

"Right then. Come on, Merry, put your hand right here," Clara told her young charge before pressing the button that took them back to the amphitheatre.

The four people that were left, walked around the pyramid to face the angry sun god. There was now a fearsome face blazing in the surface, but they all linked hands to create a united front.

"Lordy," the Doctor commented, steeling himself.

"Alright, love, what's the plan?" Rose asked.

"We're going to tell him a story. Remember what we did with the Minotaur? We see all that is, all that was, and all that could be," he explained.

"But I can't! I only see that as the Bad Wolf, I can't control it," Rose insisted.

"I need you to try and call it, Rose. I have a lot of stories rattling around in my brain, but it might not be enough to choke this beast. I need you," he admitted, not normally asking for help.

They could hear the people watching start to sing again behind them, the sentiment giving them hope.

"Ok. I'll try," she replied and closed her eyes to focus inward, searching for the golden light of the power within her. There was a link, created by the TARDIS that connected Rose to the vortex. Time Lords could see aspects of it in timelines after gazing into the vortex, but Rose could channel all of it.

"Can you hear them? All these people who've lived in terror of you and your judgement? All these people whose ancestors devoted themselves, sacrificed themselves, to you. Can you hear them singing? Oh, you like to think you're a god. But you're not a god. You're just a parasite eaten out with jealousy and envy and longing for the lives of others. You feed on them. On the memory of love and loss and birth and death and joy and sorrow. So, come on, then. Take mine. Take my memories. But I hope you've got a big appetite, because I have lived a long life and I have seen a few things," the Doctor said, addressing the monster before them. The being reached out with tendrils of golden energy as it sapped away the psychic energy that the Doctor offered.

"I walked away from the last Great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and I watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained. No time. No space. Just me. I walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a mad man. I've watched universes freeze and creations burn. I've seen things you wouldn't believe. I have lost things you will never understand. And I know things. Secrets that must never be told. Knowledge that must never be spoken. Knowledge that will make parasite gods blaze. So come on, then. Take it! Take it all, baby! Have it! You have it all!" he shouted angrily as the creature continued to feast.

As he had expected though, it wasn't enough and he was faltering. Rose could feel her husband calling out to her and her mind suddenly blazed in protection of her love. Eyes glowing gold, the Bad Wolf howled angrily.

"You are no god. You are a gluttonous thing. Every story that ever was, is or could be. I see them all. Just try and take them," she demanded as she held up her hand and blasted a beam of golden light straight into the heart of the sun.

Feeling the pull from the creature release him, the Doctor grasped Rose's legs from where he had fallen and supported his wife's battle against it. The face disappeared as a wave of golden energy flowed around the sun and released it from the hold of the being living within it.

"Infinity's too much, even for your appetite," the Doctor commented finally.

Rose collapsed as the golden light faded from her eyes and fell unconscious. James ran to his mother's side to check her over with his sonic. She seemed to be sleeping.

"Will she be alright, dad?" he questioned worriedly.

"Yeah, her connection to the TARDIS will heal her. We were hoping she could learn to control it voluntarily, but it seems to still be triggered by danger to our family. Could you carry her back to the ship for me? I seem to be a bit out of sorts myself," the Doctor requested.

"Of course. River, could you help dad?" Jamie asked as he picked up his mother.

James and River felt relieved that they had stayed with them, it might have been a long wait if the Doctor had had to wait until he and Rose were both recovered. And they were able to call Clara telepathically to return and pick them up.

Returning to the TARDIS, Rose jolted awake rather suddenly, startling everyone. Clara and her parents urged the Doctor and Rose to visit Jackie. It had been too long, and while Jackie might not have had as long to think things over as Rose had, it was time to forgive and make the most of the time they had with her very human family.

Clara assured them that she would wait in the TARDIS to avoid crossing with her younger self, and they could go on another adventure when they were done.

It turned out that they landed at Torchwood only a month after Jack had insisted they take a break and they had hidden in Victorian London. It meant that, for the people in this timestream, Clara was only about a year old. She had been two months during the original fight between Jackie and Rose, but they kept visiting the others for a while. Then visits had only been with Jamie, River, and Clara, with the explicit instructions not to mention anything happening in visits with the others.

"Hey, you two!" Donna greeted them as they exited the TARDIS in the Torchwood hub. "Been a while."

"You've no idea," the Doctor told her with a knowing look passing between them.

"Alright. Let's get this over with," Rose grumbled.

They were greeted happily by everyone at Torchwood before Pete insisted that they come back home with him to see Jackie. The Doctor kept a firm hold on her hand as they entered and the two Tyler women faced each other. It had been years of running for Rose and about a year for Jackie, but it seemed to be enough that she regretted the way she reacted.

"Rose?" Jackie gasped upon seeing them.

"Mum," she acknowledged.

"Oh, sweetheart, I'm sorry," she cried and ran to hug her with tears running her mascara.

Rose stiffened for a moment when her mother crashed into her, but hugged her back without too much hesitation. She knew it had been a shock to learn that her daughter was centuries older than her and would continue without aging, but it had hurt so much to have her own mother call her a thing, like some disgusting experiment gone wrong. That was over now. It was time for forgiveness.

"It's alright, mum. I know it was never something you were expecting," Rose told her.

"Should know better with himself around. Always something barmy going on," Jackie answered.

Both Rose and the Doctor rolled their eyes at how her apology still turned into another insult, but they let it go and tried to have a nice visit anyway. By the time they got back to the TARDIS, Jamie and River had left in their own ship, leaving the trio to travel on their own.

"How about Las Vegas?" the Doctor suggested.

"Sounds like fun!" Rose answered and Clara agreed.