The Doctor was tired of war. He never wanted to be involved in the first place; never really cared about the political alliances and enemies of Gallifrey. They had abandoned him to his own fate and persecuted his decisions so many times, he refused to take responsibility for their actions. His first encounter with the Daleks had been in his first incarnation, and now, in his eighth, he was so tired of fighting them. The Daleks were his own fault. He had brought their attention away from their own little planet and onto the rest of the universe, onto Gallifrey in particular. Therefore, he felt that he needed to help when Romana had called him.
After a century of fighting on the front lines, however, he wondered if it would ever end. Within the time lock of the war, the same battles were often fought over and over again. The poor souls involved, dying in agony with no escape. And now, a resurrected Rassilon had taken command and was threatening to enact the Final Sanction. He decreed that if the Time Lords couldn't be the overseers of the universe, then no one would. He would destroy everything rather than lose this war.
The Doctor could not allow that to happen. Life would find a way without them. And so, he had stolen the last weapon in the vaults. It was called the Moment and was said to be powerful enough to destroy an entire planet. The trouble was, the Time Lords couldn't figure out how to control it, and so, had locked it away. Even if it couldn't be controlled remotely; even if it meant suicide for him with the rest of the Time Lords, he would use it to save the rest of the universe.
Now, he found himself hiding with the damn thing in an abandoned barn, in the middle of nowhere. The citizens from this area of Gallifrey had long since fled to safer areas, but the fighting had moved on as well, so it was unlikely that anyone would seek him here. Turning the box over and over in his hands, he tried to find the controls to get this over with. Thinking on it any longer could turn him back into the coward that he was when he questioned his right to destroying the Daleks before they started. The rest of the universe was at stake now and he could not falter. Pressing the solitary button that he found, the Doctor expected some kind of explosion or burning pain, but was only faced with a shimmering portal. Timelines swirled incomprehensibly around it as he stared at the thing, then, without warning, something small and red fell out of it and onto the ground at his feet.
"A fez?"
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Clara skipped happily into her grandparents' TARDIS when she saw it parked outside of her new job as a teacher. She loved sharing what she knew of literature with the students. It was also rather cool that she was teaching at the same high school where her grandfather's first granddaughter had attended.
"Clara!" Rose shouted happily upon seeing her and they quickly spun in a warm embrace.
Her grandfather was flipping switches on the console as he programmed their next destination. "Fancy a week in ancient Mesopotamia followed by future Mars?" he asked.
"Will there be cocktails?" she asked.
"On the Moon," he responded with a smirk.
"Oooh! They have the best dancing!" Rose squealed.
"The Moon'll do," Clara told him and laughed when he also welcomed her with a hug.
"How's the new job? Teach anything good?" he questioned.
"No. Learn anything?" she teased.
"Not a thing," he answered with a grin.
"Doctor," Rose called worriedly as an alarm sounded and she looked at the screen.
"What's happening?" Clara shouted, grabbing hold of the railing as the ship shifted suddenly despite the time rotor remaining still and quiet.
"Whoa, whoa. We're taking off, but the engines aren't going," the Doctor told them confusedly. He yelped as another sudden movement knocked him to the door and he found himself in a familiar position. He clung desperately to the edge of the doorway as Rose raced to grasp his wrists and tried to pull him back inside.
Clara picked up the ringing phone on the console and listened as the woman on the line said, "Doctor, hello. We found the TARDIS. I'm having it brought in."
"He's a bit busy at the moment. Can I take a message?" Clara replied snarkily, knowing that her grandfather would not be pleased with this turn of events.
"Who are you?" the woman demanded.
"His granddaughter, Clara. He is currently hanging out the door of the TARDIS after you nearly flipped us all on our heads," she informed her.
"Oh, my god! Oh, I'm so sorry. We had no idea anyone was still in there," she apologized and Clara hung up the phone to check on her grandparents.
The Doctor seemed to have a fairly secure grip on the TARDIS, but she and Rose couldn't quite get him back inside as the helicopter that was toting them across London swung the ship around. He jumped to the ground as they were lowered onto Trafalgar Square. As soon as possible, Rose and Clara jumped out after him and faced a group of UNIT soldiers.
"Attention!" one of the men shouted and the time travellers were formally saluted as a blonde woman and a flustered looking brunette in a white lab coat and rainbow scarf approached them.
"Doctor, as Chief Scientific Officer, may I extend the official apologies of UNIT," the blonde woman told him and Clara recognized the voice as being the one who had called the TARDIS phone.
"Kate Lethbridge Stewart, a word to the wise. As I'm sure your father would have told you, I don't like being picked up," the Doctor scolded.
"Oh, I don't know," Rose teased as she threaded her arm through his.
"I'm acting on instructions from you, in the past. Orders on when you should be contacted to address this problem," Kate informed him, holding an envelope bearing his own handwriting.
"Details?" he prompted.
"Best discussed inside," she responded with a nod to the National Gallery.
"Nice scarf," he told the girl next to Kate that was staring at them in awe. The scarf matched the one he was so fond of in his fourth incarnation. He took Rose's hand and nodded to Clara as they entered the Gallery and allowed themselves to be led downstairs.
"What is all this, granddad?" Clara asked, not used to their adventures involving military personnel.
"Unified Intelligence Task Force," he replied.
"Sorry?"
"This lot. UNIT. They investigate alien stuff. Anything alien," he explained.
"Are we going to be dissected or something?" she asked worriedly.
"No, I work for them," he assured her.
"You have a job?" Clara questioned.
"Why shouldn't I have a job? I'd be brilliant at having a job," he argued.
"You just haven't clocked in for the past few centuries," Rose interjected.
"You don't have a job," Clara insisted.
"I do. This is my job. I'm doing it now," he said firmly. "Why is it ok for your dad and uncle Jack to work for Torchwood, but the idea of me having a job is ludicrous?"
"We have taken on the job of keeping the Earth safe, and if UNIT says they need us, then it fits into our job description," Rose decided, halting the argument.
They all stared in shock as they were suddenly faced with a large painting. It was an image of Gallifrey during the war. Twin Suns were distantly visible through a dusty sky, the shattered globe surrounding the Citadel showed trails of smoke rising from the buildings inside. The whole image seemed as if you could walk straight into it.
"But, but that's not possible," Clara mumbled.
"No More," the Doctor announced.
"That's the title," Kate responded.
"I know the title," he growled angrily.
"Also known as Gallifrey Falls," Kate continued.
"This painting doesn't belong here, not in this time or place."
"Obviously," Clara said, never having seen this kind of technology before.
"It's the fall of Arcadia, Gallifrey's second city," the Doctor told them.
"But how is it doing that? How is that possible? It's an oil painting in 3D," Clara wondered as she examined it more closely.
"Time Lord art. Bigger on the inside. A slice of real time, frozen," he explained.
"Could you show me how to do this, granddad? It's incredible!" Clara asked hopefully, not noticing how pained he was just seeing the image from the Time War.
"You placed it here, in the past, as part of the instructions in this emergency," Kate told him.
"You okay, love?" Rose asked softly as she squeezed his hand and let their bracelets link together. She felt an even stronger wave of agony from him when they did, telling her that he was trying to shield the pain he was feeling.
"This was the day I decided. The day I did it. The day I killed them all. The last day of the Time War. The war to end all wars between my people and the Daleks. And in that battle there was a man with more blood on his hands than any other, a man who would commit a crime that would silence the universe. And that man was me," the Doctor whispered roughly.
"Do you know why it was left here? You said the Doctor left it here, do you know why?" Rose demanded of Kate.
"Not entirely, but there are more. Easier to show you," Kate answered and led them away from that painting and down even more stairs.
"Doctor, this is-" Rose began as she looked around the under gallery, but stopped when she felt a warning nudge from the TARDIS in her mind.
"Very interesting," he said as he knelt down to pick up a handful of the white dust covering the floor of the room.
"Welcome to the Under Gallery. This is where Elizabeth the First kept all art deemed too dangerous for public consumption," Kate told them. Around them were various paintings and sculptures. Also, what they guessed were statues, covered in white sheets to protect them.
"Elizabeth? Oh god, everything to do with us, she'd deem too dangerous," Rose groaned.
"Stone dust," the Doctor commented after examining it for a moment.
"Is it important?" Kate questioned.
"In twelve hundred years I've never stepped in anything that wasn't," he replied and turned to see the girl with the scarf behind them. "Oi, you. Are you sciency?" he asked, thinking that the lab coat probably meant she did lab type stuff.
"Oh, er, well, er, yes," she stuttered.
"Got a name?" he asked.
"Yes," she told him.
"Good. I've always wanted to meet someone called Yes," he responded. The girl looked like she wanted to correct him with her actual name, but he blustered on quickly. "Now, I want this stone dust analysed. And I want a report in triplicate, with lots of graphs and diagrams and complicated sums on my desk, tomorrow morning, ASAP, pronto, L O L. See? Job. Do I have a desk?"
"No," Kate said bluntly.
"And I want a desk," the Doctor ordered.
"Get a team. Analyse the stone dust. Inhaler!" Kate instructed the young woman as she followed the Doctor further into the under gallery.
In a small, glass display case, the Doctor found a red fez. Rose groaned when he smiled brightly and put it on before rejoining the group.
"Really, Doctor?" Rose sighed.
"Fezzes are cool," he insisted.
"Someday, you could just walk past a fez," Clara told him.
"Never gonna happen," he replied.
They entered a white room with a dozen or so three dimensional paintings on the walls and broken glass all over the floor.
"As you instructed, nothing has been touched," someone reported to Kate.
"This is why we called you in," Kate told them.
"What exactly did the instructions say?" Rose asked her.
"Just when this happened, that we needed to get you here by any means necessary. The letter was stored with the paintings after they were left in the care of Elizabeth the First," Kate told her.
"3D again," Clara commented to her grandfather as he studied the glass on the floor.
"Interesting," he said.
"The broken glass?"
"No, where it's broken from. Look at the shatter pattern. The glass on all these paintings has been broken from the inside," he pointed out.
"As you can see, all the paintings are landscapes. No figures of any kind," Kate said.
"So?" the Doctor asked.
"There used to be," she told him as she handed over a tablet showing the pictures as they used to be. In the photo, all of the pictures had people in them, always facing away.
"Something's got out the paintings," Clara realized.
"Lots of somethings. Dangerous," the Doctor corrected, looking around the room.
"This whole place has been searched. There's nothing here that shouldn't be, and nothing's got out," Kate insisted.
"Love, what is that? It looks familiar," Rose asked, pointing out a bright, shimmering portal that appeared in the room.
"Oh no, not now," he grumbled.
"Granddad, what is it?"
"No, not now. I'm busy."
"Is it to do with the paintings?" Kate questioned worriedly.
"No, no. This is different. I remember this. Almost remember," he told them.
"Was this to do with Liz the First? Why don't I remember?" Rose asked him.
"Oh, of course! This is where we come in," he announced, then tossed the fez through the portal.
Grasping the hands of Rose and Clara, he pulled them with him through the light, shouting, "Geronimo!"
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Rose had managed to sneak into the Queen's personal chambers. Her husband had assured her that there were aliens in the palace. Some kind of shape shifters that he had encountered centuries ago, in the future. They had wanted to take over the planet before and were certainly up to no good here. So, Rose and baby Jamie were tasked with searching the castle for clues, while the Doctor made his way beneath the castle to search the darker areas where it would be harder for a woman to go unnoticed in this time period. Though, she never could understand how his pinstriped suit went relatively unnoticed.
"I don't see anything unusual here, love. You know this would be easier if I could scan for alien tech with the sonic," she thought to the Doctor.
"That is precisely what I'm doing with it down here. And there is something, I just have to find it, ooh! That looks interesting!" he responded, suddenly distracted.
Rose shook her head in exasperation and searched through the various cabinets and drawers in the room for anything obviously alien.
"What? How did you get in here?" Queen Elizabeth demanded when she found Rose in her private space.
"Uh-oh," Jamie said from his spot in the sling over his mother's shoulder.
"Oops, ummm cleaning staff?" she suggested meekly.
"Guards!" Liz One shouted angrily, prompting Rose to dash out of the nearest door and away from the furious monarch.
"I'm afraid I was discovered, love. Time for me to leave," she informed the Doctor as she ran through the hallways. The guards followed close on her heels, crashing into the corners as they chased her.
"I won't be far behind. Just a moment," he replied and the whole castle was suddenly shaking with the force of some kind of explosion.
They both skidded to a stop right in front of the door and ran outside with guards chasing them from both sides, shouting angrily. Jamie was laughing happily as he was bounced around in the sling on his mother's hip, oblivious to the danger. The Doctor and Rose couldn't help but laugh breathlessly along with him as they ran. The life of their little family was filled with explosions and running, and always would be.
They stopped to catch their breath when they couldn't hear the guards' pursuit any longer.
"I take it you found something dangerous if you felt the need to blow it up," Rose prompted.
"Yup! Definitely Zygons. I managed to damage some of the equipment they use in duplicating people. The originals are kept in stasis, while the aliens walk around in their place. Looks like they've been here long enough that there might be more than one bunch of those things, but hopefully, that will slow them down a bit," the Doctor explained.
"There weren't any people in there when you blew it up, I hope!"
"What?! No, of course not. I released the people in stasis first. Just servants, I think. The explosion though, had the guards thinking that I was trying to destroy the whole palace," he answered.
"Well, Liz already didn't like me for the fact that flirting with you wasn't getting her anywhere. Now that she found me snooping about in her room, I'll definitely be on her hit list," Rose sighed. The Doctor had told her about meeting Elizabeth the First with Martha and Shakespeare. He had always wondered why she hated him, and now they were finding out.
"She'll be demanding my head before we're done, so it's not over yet," he agreed.
"What in the world is that thing?" Rose questioned, staring up at the shimmering portal that hovered over their heads.
"Don't know. Some sort of temporal disturbance from the looks of it," he told her.
Suddenly, something fell out of it, making the light of the distortion flash brightly for a moment. A red fez fell onto the grass in front of them. Rose picked it up curiously and placed it on Jamie's head, making him giggle as he tried to pull it back off.
"Where did that come from?" Rose wondered, just before three people fell out of the thing and landed on the grass in a heap.
The new arrivals disentangled themselves and the young man helped the two ladies with him up from the ground. Rose stared confusedly at herself for a moment, not yet looking at who was with her.
"What?!" the Doctor in pinstripes gasped.
"Oh my god, is that dad?" Clara questioned.
"Really?" he asked, looking at this brunette young lady fondly. A daughter? Oh, how he would love to have another child with his beloved Rose.
"Sorry, mate, she means the baby. Yes, Clara, that's your dad in your Gran's arms," the Doctor wearing a bow tie corrected.
"But…" the younger Rose stuttered as the she looked at her future self. She hadn't aged at all. They knew something unusual was going on with her biology, but to have a grown granddaughter and still look like she was in her twenties?
"Yeah," the older Rose replied, knowing where her own thoughts had gone. She didn't remember these events, so there must have been some memory suppression to preserve the timelines.
"How? How old are you?" the pinstriped Doctor asked his wife from the future.
"Rude!" both Roses snapped, his own slapping him in the arm with the back of her hand.
"Sorry to interrupt the little reunion, or whatever this is, but is there a reason why that thing is still there?" Clara questioned regarding the glowing portal they'd just fallen through.
"Brilliant question, Kate? Can you hear me?" he called out, hoping that it still connected with their point of origin, but there was no reply. "Guessing that you two didn't create that thing?" the oldest Doctor asked. When the younger couple shook their heads, he snatched the fez off of Jamie's head and tossed it through the portal once more.
"And, why did you do that?" Clara questioned.
"To get the attention of whomever might be on the other end? Whoever made that thing is most likely connected to it at some point in time and space. They might not even know what it is that they've done," the bow tie wearing Doctor rambled, but was interrupted by another person jumping through and landing roughly on his feet in front of them.
The two Doctors gaped at the sight of their eighth incarnation as he took in his surroundings.
"Earth, England, mid fifteen hundreds, I'd say. Well, that's certainly not what I expected to happen," the youngest Doctor announced before turning to face the others.
"What are you doing here?" the Doctor in the pinstriped suit questioned incredulously.
"Doctor, who is that?" asked the version of Rose in Elizabethan garb and carrying baby Jamie.
"Ah, I see. A pleasure, madam. I am also the Doctor. Good gracious, why are there two of you here?" he asked when he noticed the other version of Rose.
"Well, with three of you, why not?" the older Rose commented. She had seen pictures of all previous incarnations of her husband and recognized him instantly. She grasped her husband's hand and held up their linked wedding bracelets. After accidentally bumping into the ninth Doctor when Jamie was little, they decided that it was important for them to be able to recognize any version of him that they might come across.
"Really? Why did that blasted thing do that?" the youngest Doctor wondered, staring up at the spot where the portal had been. It seemed to be gone now, unfortunately. "And how do I get back?"
"We might need to figure that out later, Granddad. We have company," Clara commented and they all looked up to see a dozen or so Zygons facing them. The slimy, red aliens were snarling angrily and a few appeared to have energy weapons of some kind.
"Right," the eldest Doctor began. "Clara and Rose with Jamie, please stay back while we deal with this. We definitely don't want Jamie getting hurt before Clara is even born and causing a paradox, love."
"Why do I have to stay out of it?" Clara grumbled.
"Because we really don't want to have to explain to your parents why you regenerated again and have them keep you from travelling with us anymore, sweetheart," the older Rose told her, taking position next to her current husband.
"Regenerated? But, how?" the youngest Doctor gasped, looking at his future family in awe. With what he knew would have to happen to stop the Time War, he couldn't understand how there could be more Time Lords in the future.
"Explanations later, Zygons now," the Doctor wearing a bow tie insisted.
"Mama!" little Jamie shouted when he saw the other version of Rose and reached for her despite already being in his mother's arms.
The group of Zygons marched toward them threateningly, one of them holding some kind of scanning device. The alien holding it pointed out the closest version of Rose to the leader.
"That female is not a Time Lord, Commander. She will not regenerate," he reported.
All of the weapons turned towards her and all three Doctors immediately moved to protect her as best they could. Clara did her best to shield the younger Rose and her father, even though they were further from the face off.
As the weapons started to fire, it became apparent that staying in a group like that was not going to work. They needed a plan to incapacitate the invaders and get them away from Earth. Rose dove behind a large tree as the Doctors dodged the shots fired in their directions as well.
"We need a plan, love," Rose thought to her husband. The other two Doctors were surprised to find that they heard her as well. They'd never heard of bonded couples meeting out of their time like this before, so no one knew how that particular connection would work.
"Working on it, sweetheart. I don't exactly have time to build anything using the contents of my pockets at the moment," the pinstriped Doctor replied.
"I've got that flashy strobe light ball thing that you made for Jamie in my pocket. Would that help somehow?" the younger Rose suggested from her hiding place.
"Actually, it might. Only three of them actually have weapons. If we can stun them for a few seconds, we might be able to run in and disarm them in the confusion," the oldest Doctor postulated.
"Are we ready then?" the youngest Doctor asked them, not particularly fond of how this situation wasn't differing very much from the battles he had been facing for the last few decades.
"Ready when you are, Rose," the older Rose told the younger.
Keeping Jamie held close to her chest, Rose reached into the hidden pocket of her period dress and found the little blue ball that her husband had made for their son. It was disturbingly bright and noisy, but had kept him quite entertained as he tossed it around his playroom in the TARDIS. She kept low to the ground as she crawled through the bushes to get closer to the aliens and the others kept dodging their attacks. When she felt close enough that her throw would reach them, she watched for the best chance to toss it into the fray, not seeing that one of the Zygons was aiming straight for her.
The eighth Doctor, however, had been keeping a close eye on that particular alien as the one he planned to disarm and his hearts started racing at the sight of his future wife and son in the line of fire. He immediately dove in front of her just in time to block the energy blast and fell to the ground.
Clara screamed and fired a blaster at each of the Zygon's weapons, vaporizing them and stopping the fight.
"Where did you get that?!" the bow tied Doctor asked incredulously.
"You really think that my mum would let me out travelling without one?" Clara replied.
"Can we argue about this later?" the youngest Rose snapped at them from her position near the injured Doctor.
"You'd best back up a bit, love. You know how this goes. Always thought that I regenerated from the blast at the end of the war," the Doctor from her time warned her.
They all backed away, Clara keeping her blaster aimed at the Zygons as they watched warily the consequences of their attack.
"I'm so sorry, Doctor," Rose told the man that would be her husband, tears in her eyes as she saw his pain.
"To know what kind of future I have to look forward to? It's more than worth it," he gasped and flinched in pain. His back arched up from the ground as golden light shimmered over his skin beneath the filthy clothes he had worn through too many battles on Gallifrey.
Both versions of Rose gasped at the sight of their first Doctor lying on the forest floor and ran to his side as soon as the regeneration energy dissipated.
