a/n: This is the last full chapter. There is only a short epilogue after this, which I may post as early as this evening. Please note this chapter is rated M.

This chapter has been slightly edited to comply with canon established in the episode Day of the Doctor. Otherwise it remains unchanged.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

And that's why it's my fault. They wouldn't have lost their planet if it weren't for me.

"Wha… what?" Rose started.

"All of this, the Kern losing their planet, all the people they took over, all the people they killed… Rose, you almost died when you were attacked, and it was my fault!"

Rose didn't doubt that the man who burned up a sun for her had the ability to destroy a planet, but she couldn't understand how he could possibly be responsible in this case, and she told him so.

"You've only been here a couple of months, and the Kern have been here at least six. And who knows how long before that their planet was destroyed."

Instead of answering he stood, grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. She barely had a chance to set down her mug before he began to pull her down the short path to his workshop.

The low, long barn was dark compared to the bright summer morning outside, but just as Rose's eyes began to adjust to the light, the Doctor flipped a switch near the door. Heavy blinds descended, covering the windows and plunging the room into almost total darkness.

The Doctor let go of her hand, and she heard him cross the room. For a second or two, the computer monitor lit up as he typed rapidly into the computer. Then the screen went dark.

Suddenly the room was filled with stars.

She walked from the doorway to the center of the room, marveling at the holographic map that now surrounded her. It was as if she stood at the center of the universe. Around her floated galaxies slowly spinning on their axes and the bright glow of quasars in the distance. At the same time, the entire map slowly rotated around her.

"This is incredible," she breathed. Then she turned to him. "But I don't understand."

The Doctor crossed the room, the golden glow of an elliptical galaxy illuminating his face. He stepped through it to stand next to her.

"Did you know that the state of astronomy on this planet is abysmal?" he asked. "They had some stars listed as galaxies, and a few galaxies and quasars listed as stars. There were stars listed in the wrong place or at the wrong distance. Someone had even listed a brown dwarf as a red giant."

Rose stared at him, puzzled. "What on Earth are you talking about?"

"The missing stars."

He pointed at a galaxy above them. Instantly it zoomed closer, not coming to a stop until it surrounded them. He then pointed to a spot that looked suspiciously empty compared to the rest of the galaxy.

She stared at him blankly for a moment, and then suddenly it hit her. "The missing stars?" she asked.

"Yes, the stars that were still missing after we stopped the Reality Bomb."

"You figured it out? What caused it?"

He nodded. "I thought that they looked familiar, but I couldn't figure out why. Once I realized the star charts were wrong and corrected the errors, the answer became obvious."

"And?"

"In the center of the missing stars, there had been an explosion, an explosion unlike anything anyone had ever seen. A massive, massive explosion that set off a chain reaction that sent a shockwave throughout the galaxy so large that it caused the total destruction of hundreds of nearby stars, and the sudden deaths of countless others before it dissipated. With every star that was destroyed, the planets surrounding them died, and all life on them died as well."

"What caused that?" she asked in shock.

He walked back to the computer and tapped a key and the holographic star map disappeared. Then he crossed the room and raised the curtains again.

"The explosion of a black hole," he said. "Or, more specifically, the explosion of a singularity in the center of a collapsing star that was in the process of becoming a black hole." He paused for a moment, as if steeling himself up for something difficult, before he continued. "The center of the explosion was at galactic co-ordinates 10-0-11-0-0 by 0-2 from Galactic Zero Center, in the constellation of Kasterborous. The star in question was called the Eye of Harmony and was in the center of one of the most beautiful planets in the universe."

Rose stared at him with a sinking feeling. "Doctor," she said quietly. "What was the planet called?"

He didn't answer immediately, and when he did, it was only with great difficulty. "It was sometimes called the Shining World of the Seven Systems. Snowcapped mountains towered over wide plains of scarlet grass. The slow, wide river Lethe wound its way through enormous forests of trees with leaves of silver to empty into the Sea of Harmony. When the second sun rose in the south the forests looked like they were on fire, and at suns set, the sea would look like molten gold. When it was destroyed, one of the wonders of the universe was snuffed out forever."

"Doctor, which planet was it?" She was afraid to hear the answer because she suspected she knew what it was. "What was its name?"

"Gallifrey," he whispered so quietly she could hardly hear him.

"Gallifrey?" She took a deep breath. "I don't understand. The parallel version of Gallifrey exploded, too? There were Time Lords here, too? Did the Time War happen here as well?"

The Doctor shook his head. "The Time Lords only existed in one universe, Rose. There were other versions of Gallifrey in other universes, although none of them were called that, and some of those worlds were even populated, but we were the only Time Lords. And the Eye of Harmony only existed in our universe."

"I knew it was a possibility, that there was a very, very slim chance that the explosion of the Eye would turn it not into a black hole, but a wormhole, leading from one place to another, but mathematically the risk was so small, and even if it happened I believed the Time Lock would stop it. It stopped the explosion from spreading to the rest of our universe, but for a second, in the second it took between blowing up the Eye and Time Locking it, some of the energy broke through into another dimension. This dimension."

His face screwed up with emotion. "The explosion of this planet was caused by the destruction of Gallifrey in our universe. The explosion of the Eye was so powerful it caused a temporary rupture between the two universes just long enough to blow up the planet. I did this. I caused it. I caused the crack between the universes that we fell through the first time we came to Pete's World. I caused the weakness between the universes that Torchwood exploited and made you get trapped here. I caused the stars to go out, the planets to be destroyed, the people to be killed. I caused the entanglement between the universes. I did this. In one fell swoop, I caused devastation and death in two separate universes."

Rose flashed back in her mind to her time traveling with her first Doctor. Piece by piece, bit by bit, with a sentence here and a sentence there he had told her a little about the war and his role in ending it.

"All those deaths… All those people," he said numbly. "I killed them just as surely as if I had held a gun to their heads and pulled the trigger."

"You did what you had to do," she said to him firmly. "You had no choice."

"There is always a choice," he answered. "It's just that sometimes all the choices are bad ones."

He began to pace the room with such speed and energy it looked as if he were trying to literally run away from his past while still remaining in the small space.

"He was right. I am dangerous," he said, and Rose realized he was talking about the full Time Lord Doctor. "I didn't want to believe it, but he was right. When Collins was threatening you, when he tried to get you join without caring if it would kill you…"

"You did not kill him, Doctor!" she practically shouted. "I did!"

He stopped in his tracks and turned to her, wide-eyed. "I hoped…"

"You hoped I didn't know, yeah?" she asked. "But I did. I didn't mean to kill them. I just meant to force them out of my mind, but there were so many of them… I had to use so much energy to do it that it killed Frank. Killed all of them. I did it, not you."

He shook his head. "You should never have been in that position to begin with. When I saw you strapped down in that chair… I was so angry I wanted to kill him. In fact I might have killed him if I hadn't been strapped down myself. And then when I realized he was dead… for a moment I didn't care. No, for a moment I was even glad he was dead." He shook his head. "Oh, Rose, you are living with a monster."

"Doctor, you are not a monster," she told him firmly. "Those feelings are normal. You are a good man, the best man I've ever met."

He drew in a ragged breath. "You really don't understand."

"Then make me understand," she pleaded.

"The problem isn't that I caused it." His voice broke as the words tore from him. "The problem is that despite the fact that you almost died, despite all the deaths, despite the destruction of countless planets in two separate universes, despite everything... I would do it again."

For a moment they stared at one another as his words seemed to echo in the room.

Then Rose swiftly crossed the short distance between them to tightly wrap him in her arms. She felt his whole body shake with the long repressed emotion, and she held him as the long buried grief and guilt over his role in the Time War rose to the surface. Slowly she felt the tremors that wracked his body come to a stop. Letting go of him for a moment, she took his face in her hands, pulled his head down and kissed him.

He stiffened, and Rose could sense the Time Lord in him warring with his newfound humanness. She knew the Time Lord part of him wanted to run, to escape the overwhelming guilt he felt, and she was afraid he'd push her away.

He pulled away just far enough to meet her eyes, pain and guilt and the conflict between staying and running written all over his face. For a moment she was certain he was going to bolt. But then he pulled her roughly back into his arms and crashed their lips together.

By now he had kissed her countless times, slowly and lovingly or full of passion and desire, but this time was hard, needy, and full of longing and fear and as if he were craving absolution. He quickly moved from her mouth to her jaw and throat, nipping and sucking a line down to her collarbone, all the while whispering things against her skin that she couldn't understand. She dropped her head back with a sigh of pleasure, and he drew a ragged breath and rested his forehead against hers.

"Please, Rose," he begged, "I need you. I need you so much."

"You have me," she promised. "Always."

At her words, he yanked her t-shirt up and off so roughly that she was convinced it would have ripped had it been a regular blouse. With a practiced hand he unclasped her bra, removed it and dropped it to the floor. He then bent down to kiss and suckle her breasts while at the same time unbuttoning and unzipping her jeans.

He had always been passionate when they made love, but at that moment she realized she had never seen him this out of control before. Ever. In or out of the bedroom. The only time that had come close was when he had held a gun on her when she had stood between him and a Dalek.

This time it wasn't about arousal or desire; it was about needing to feel a connection to someone, to her, to embrace life after experiencing so much death. It was a profoundly human response, one she doubted Time Lords shared, and it struck her how human he had become over the past weeks. Knowing how much he needed this, this completely human connection, Rose pulled him upward and started pushing off his jacket. In response, he pressed his mouth to hers again in a frantic, almost painful clash of lips and teeth and tongues. When he stopped to yank off his shirt, she toed off her shoes and shimmied out of her jeans and knickers. When she was done he kissed her again, pushing her backwards until her back practically slammed into the wall behind her.

Without removing his mouth from hers, he unfastened his own trousers and shoved them and his pants down, not bothering to completely remove them. Cupping her arse, he lifted her up and she immediately wrapped her legs around his waist. He reached between them, lined himself up with her opening and plunged himself deeply into her.

She hadn't been quite ready for him, and she sharply inhaled at the sudden feeling of fullness. Coming back to himself for a moment, he paused to let herself adjust to him and again rested his forehead on hers.

I don't deserve you, Rose. Please, please don't leave me.

For a moment Rose thought he had said it aloud but then realized he hadn't. The words had echoed straight to her mind, bypassing her ears, and she wondered if he knew he was projecting his thoughts. She doubted it as he was so reserved with his emotions, but she couldn't be sure. Never, she thought back, turning her head to kiss him and hoping he could sense her response. Never leaving you. Never, ever leaving you.

He whispered in her ear something that she was sure was in his native tongue and then began to move within her, thrusting with almost a bruising intensity. Her heart broke to feel the anguish in his thoughts and emotions. She held him tightly and murmured reassurances to him, and he came quickly with a strangled cry of her name. She felt his heart pound against her chest as he panted, trying to catch his breath.

Eventually he set her down and pulled up his underpants and trousers. Meanwhile, she quickly dressed in her shirt and knickers, not bothering with the rest.

He sank to sit on the floor, and when she moved to kneel in front of him, he pulled her into his lap and held her tightly, as if he were afraid she would disappear if he let go.

"Did I hurt you?" he asked her softly.

"No," she whispered to him and kissed his temple. "No, you didn't hurt me."

"I am sorry, Rose," he said, grief evident in his voice. "I am so, so sorry."

"For this? You don't need to be sorry. I wanted this as much as you did."

He shook his head. "No. Well, yes," he corrected himself, "you don't deserve to be shagged against a wall like that. But I meant for everything. I don't deserve you."

She took his face in her hands and looked deeply into his eyes. "I told you I wanted it," she told him. "I love you. And I believe in you."

"You always have, haven't you? Even when I haven't deserved it."

"Oh, Doctor," she said, caressing his face. "You have always deserved it."

His eyes glistened. "Oh, Rose Tyler, I love you so, so much."

~oOo~

"It was horrible," the Doctor said quietly. "Imagine the worst thing you can think of and multiply it by a billion and you wouldn't even come close."

After their encounter in the lab, she had taken his hand and led him back to the house, back to their bedroom and back to bed. They were now sitting in bed under the duvet, propped up by pillows and holding hands with her head resting on his shoulder. By unspoken agreement they both faced forward, so he didn't have to meet her eyes as he spoke. She knew it was difficult enough for him to talk about the War without the added pressure of seeing her look at him at the same time.

"No one knew how long it went on," he continued. "As you measure time, centuries, probably. Possibly much longer."

"How could you not know?" she asked.

"It was a war throughout Time, Rose," he said. "In all of time, future and past, and encompassing all of the universe. The Daleks had managed to steal the secret of time travel from us and were using it to wage war on fronts all across the cosmos. They had one objective, the same objective that they'd always had since their creation, to be the sole intelligent life form in the universe.

"There had been Time Wars before. Time sensitive species were no different than anyone else; they had wars over territory and resources and god images and how another species pronounced the word for the color blue. But never had a war been so all-encompassing, containing all of time and space within it.

"The Time Lords and the Daleks were fairly evenly matched. What the Time Lords lacked in ruthlessness and bloodlust, we more than made up for in technology." He paused for a moment before continuing. "And then it happened. Time itself became a weapon. Time began to play a role like it had never played before or since. Someone on one side or the other, I never found out who, came up with the brilliant idea that battles already fought could be fought again and their outcome changed. Both sides began to study the battles they had lost, conduct a post-match analysis if you will, and then go back in time to change what happened.

"Over and over and over, the same battle would be fought. The Daleks would win, and then we would go back and change the key thing that led to our defeat, bringing victory to the battle. Then the Daleks would go back in time, rewriting time and changing things so that they would win again. The battles raged on and on and on and spread from planet to planet, forward and backward in time, with Daleks and Time Lords alike rewriting time to suit themselves and leaving destruction and chaos in their wake. The war was sweeping through all time and space and turning the entire universe into Hell.

"The war spread from galaxy to galaxy. Eventually the Time Lords suffered so many losses that they began resurrecting people from the Matrix to fight in the war. Even Rassilon, the Time Lord's founder, was resurrected in the belief that he could lead the Time Lords to victory, but the losses continued to mount. No matter what we did, planet after planet fell to the Daleks, their entire populations slaughtered.

"I was on the front lines when we received word that the Daleks had invaded Gallifrey. They had broken through our defenses and had invaded Arcadia, and we needed to return and defend it. Nowhere was the war more horrific than Arcadia. I was there, at the key battle. The last day of the war, if you could call it a day as it seemed to go on forever. The battle for Arcadia continued to be fought over and over and over, with the same people dying again and again and again. But these were Time Lords fighting the Daleks, and they could remember even after time had been rewritten. They remembered dying; they experienced the pain of death over and over and over. I witnessed…." His voice broke, and he closed his eyes as he was swept into his memories. "I saw friends, family, little children die right in front of me over and over and over again and I was completely powerless to stop it. Finally, something broke within me and I said 'no more'."

He opened his eyes. "When Arcadia fell, the Daleks invaded the Capitol and were searching for the one thing that could give them ultimate victory over not only the Time Lords but over the universe itself. The Eye of Harmony.

"I told you before about the Eye. It was a collapsing star–a star slowly turning into a black hole that had been balanced in such a way that it was an unlimited source of energy not just for Gallifrey, but for Time Lords and their TARDISes no matter where or when they were. If the Daleks had gotten ahold of that…"

His voice trailed off. Rose squeezed his hand comfortingly, and after a moment he took a deep breath and continued.

"What I didn't know was that Rassilon had put together a plan that would end the War once and for all. He called it the Final Sanction. He would create a paradox large enough that it would rip apart the Time Vortex itself, allowing the Time Lords to survive as pure consciousness while destroying all of the rest of Creation. When I entered the Panopticon, it had just been put to a vote. Rassilon's plan was almost unanimously approved by the High Council, with only a handful of dissenters.

"I was the only one of the dissenters with a TARDIS, so I knew I was the only one capable of stopping him. I stole a weapon called The Moment and destroyed Gallifrey and the Eye with it. Then I Time Locked both Gallifrey and the War itself so that no one could time travel into or out of it. With the whole of Gallifrey from beginning to end trapped within the Time Lock, Gallifrey and the Time Lords retreated into the realm of legend and myth and there they will stay for eternity."

At this he stopped, and they sat quietly hand in hand for a long time. Sunlight was streaming through the open window of their bedroom, and in the distance Rose could hear birds singing. There was something obscene about that, that life was going on as always, oblivious to what he had done to save it. But then that's why he had done it, she realized, so that life could continue just like this, untouched by the War that had cost him so much.

"I wasn't meant to survive, you know," he eventually said. "I never intended to survive. In fact, after the War was over I did my level best to try not to.

"And then I met a girl. A silly little nineteen year old girl with bleached blonde hair and a dead-end job that happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time." For the first time since they had begun talking he glanced at her, and with it he gave her a small smile. "And it turned out the girl wasn't so silly after all. She had a quick mind; she was smart and brave and curious and could see things I didn't see, like the London Eye for example. And within twenty-four hours she had managed to save my life. And all of a sudden I didn't want to die anymore."

He turned to face her directly and raised one hand to caress her face with the backs of his fingers. "He was right, you know. You do make me better. You always have, ever since the moment I met you. To quote an old movie, you make me want to be a better man."

"Well, we're even then," she said, meeting his eyes. "Because from the moment I met you, you changed my life. You taught me that there was more to life than beans on toast and Friday nights at the local. You showed me that I could be more than just a shop girl with no A-levels, and you taught me to stand up for what's right no matter how tough it is."

She took his face in her hands and gently kissed him before resting her forehead on his. She could hear him telepathically projecting his love for her and could feel it all the way down to her bones.

"Doctor," she whispered, trying to send her love for him back through the link he had created, "you make me better, too."