City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone

Tracy Chapman – Fast Car

Journeys End: part 1

The Doctor pulled out of his half regeneration with a gasp. 'Now then. Where were we?' He smiled at his three companions. They stared back in shock but he ignored them bending down to look at the jar with his hand in it. 'You see? Used the regeneration energy to heal myself, but soon as I was done, I didn't need to change. I didn't want to, why would I?'

He adjusted his tie with a smug expression. 'Look at me. So, to stop the energy going all the way, I siphoned off the rest into a handy bio-matching receptacle, namely, my hand, my hand there, my handy spare hand!' He grinned at Rose who was still staring at him shocked. 'Remember, Christmas Day, Sycorax, lost my hand in a sword fight? That's my hand. What d'you think?'

She slowly walked towards him. 'You - you're still you?'

'I'm still me.'

She grinned and threw her arms around him. He hugged her back but something caught his attention. 'Can anyone else hear singing?'

Rose pulled back and smiled at the Captain remembering the first time they'd met him and the Doctor asking them both if they could hear singing but then she realised he was right. She could hear singing.

Jack turned and looked down at the floor. 'Oh, no!'

The Doctor ran around the side of the console and looked down at Winter. One hand pressed against the floor of the TARDIS and the other against her heart as the skin around her hand seemed to flush back and forth with gold. A heartbeat of embers. She was singing quietly and Pip sat next to her, watching, guarding.

'Don't touch her!' The Doctor warned as Jack reached for her shoulder.

'Who is she?' Rose asked.

'She works with me, she's, a friend.' Jack sighed. 'What's wrong Doc?'

The Doctor slid on his glasses and lay a hand to hers. 'It's the link. To the TARDIS. The massive energy of a regeneration can take its toll on her too and, by extension Nemo gets hit with a blast of regenerative energy.'

'What does that mean?'

'Honestly?' The Doctor looked up at them. 'No idea. This is all brand new Jack, a little like you. We have no way of knowing just how much they melded over that year or in the months after it.'

'So you're saying I should have noticed quicker. Got her back to you as soon as she started…'

'No, no I didn't say that. There no way to know if anything would be different if you'd got there sooner. I'm saying we have to wait and see.'

Jack sighed and looked up to the ceiling.

'She's your friend,' Rose pointed to Jack. 'But she's linked with the TARDIS?'

'It's a long story.' Jack shrugged and the Doctor laid his hand on Winter's forehead. 'What is that song?'

'It's the TARDIS song. You lot can't hear it but she can, and I can. Right now though, we don't really have the time so…' The Doctor placed his hands around her face, touching his fingers to her temples. 'You have to let her go. She can't carry you for long. Come on. That's it.'

The gold dimmed and the singing stopped. Winter blinked as though waking up from an unexpected nap. She looked up at Jack then around at the rest of her audience.

'I'm on the floor.'

'Yes, of course, sorry.' The Doctor helped her to her feet then let go and she swayed, holding on to the console.

'Wow, head rush.'

'Well, carrying a portion of the soul of an ancient trans-dimentional space ship will do that to you.' Jack joked.

She smiled and rolled her eyes at Jack, picking Peregrine off the floor and throwing him up onto one of the coral pillars. He latched onto it and gave her a grateful squeak as she settled down on the Captain's chair. 'You're right, next time I'll mind meld with some stairs instead.'

He laughed and approached The Doctor and Donna around the other side of the console.

Winter closed her eyes against the slight spinning of her head until she felt the seat dip slightly beside her. When she opened her eyes, Roses wide brown ones were looking right back at her.

'Hi.'

Winter's mouth dropped open slightly but she managed to force out, 'Hello.'

'Um, I'm Rose.'

'Nemo.'

'Like the..?'

'Fish?' Winter sighed, 'yeah I guess.'

Rose smiled. 'I guess you get that a lot right?'

'Enough.'

The two women smiled at each other. 'So, how do you fit into this bunch then?'

Winter shrugged thinking back her few trips with The Doctor to date.

'Jack's taking me on a tour of The Doctor's most fearsome enemies,' she joked.

Rose grinned and nodded. 'Right. You'll be meeting my mum soon then.'

Winter looked at her, unsure how to react until she noted the slightest bit of Roses tongue peaking out between her teeth and then the brilliant smile that followed. She couldn't help grinning along and they both chuckled.

'That bad?'

'Oh, she had him running. There was this one time with the Slitheen…'

'What are you two saying?'

They looked up to find The Doctor looking over at them warily and Winter smiled back.

'Just that, it's nice to be back,' Rose told him.

His expression seemed to soften and he turned a few nobs and switches but his head shot up and he frowned when Winter gasped and jumped to her feet. The lights dimmed and they all looked up at the central column.

'They've got us! Power's gone! Some kind of chronon loop...'

The ship rocked and everyone held onto the sides.

'Can we do anything?' Winter asked.

'Not unless you have a nuclear missile strapped to your leg.'

She smirked. 'You wanna check.'

The Doctor rolled his eyes. 'Oohh cheeky, you've been spending far too long with him.' He gestured to Jack as he flipped a panel of switches down as Jack grinned triumphantly. 'Right you lot, fill me in. What do I need to know?'

'There's a massive Dalek ship at the centre of the planets. They're calling it the Crucible. Guess that's our destination,' Jack told him.

Donna frowned and turned to the Doctor. 'You said these planets were like an engine. But what for?'

The Doctor suddenly snapped to life and pointed at Rose. 'You've been in a parallel world, that world's running ahead of this universe. You've seen the future. What was it?'

Rose shook her head. 'It's the darkness.'

Donna blinked and seemed to remember something. 'The stars were going out.'

Rose nodded. 'One by one. We looked up at the sky and they were just dying. Basically, we've been building this, um... this travel machine, this... this, er, Dimension Cannon, so I c- well, so, I could...'

The Doctor looked like he was fighting back a smile. 'What?'

'So I could come back.'

He grinned at her and she blushed lightly.

'Shut up. Anyway, suddenly, it started to work and the dimensions started to collapse. Not just in our world, not just in yours, but the whole of reality. Even the Void was dead. Something is destroying everything.'

Winter smiled at them. Despite the portents of doom, they were cute together. She frowned and shushed as Pip jumped onto the console and started pressing buttons down. Breaking away from the main group she pulled him off the side and scolded him gently. The TARDIS shuddered to a stop and she heard a noise from outside.

'Doctor, you will step forth or die.'

Winter raised an eyebrow. 'What? No third option?'

The Doctor shook his head solemnly. 'We'll have to go out. Cos, if we don't, they'll get in.'

Rose looked shocked. 'You told me nothing could get through those doors.'

Jack nodded in agreement. 'You've got extrapolator shielding!'

But the Doctor shook his head again and turned to them. 'Last time we fought the Daleks, they were scavengers and hybrids and mad. But this is a fully-fledged Dalek Empire, at the height of its power. Experts at fighting TARDISes, they can do anything. Right now, that wooden door... is just wood.'

Jack turned to Rose for a new plan. 'What about your Dimension Jump?'

'It needs another twenty minutes, and anyway, I'm not leaving.'

Winter looked down at Jack's arm. 'The manipulator?'

'Went down with the power loss,' he replied.

The Doctor sighed. 'Right, then, all of us together... Yeah.'

Winter shook her head. 'Not quite.' She turned to Pip on her shoulder. 'You're staying here and if you chew through the cables, no melon for a month.'

The little monkey gave a mock salute and jumped onto the bars around the grating, scampering along to the back and drawing their attention to Donna who was standing a few meters behind them all. The Doctor called to her and went to her side but she seemed to be entranced. When she eventually realised he was talking she was fine with going out, but there was something different about her.

The Dalek outside taunted them again and Rose turned to Jack with a nervous laugh. 'Daleks.'

He grinned and laughed. 'Oh, God!'

Winter grabbed his hand and squeezed it as the Doctor turned to smile at them.

'It's been good, though, hasn't it? All of us, all of it. Everything we did.' He looked at Donna, 'You were brilliant.' Then turned to Winter. 'You were brilliant.'

She felt her heart swell with pride and felt Jack squeeze her hand again as the Doctor turned to him.

'And you were brilliant.' Finally, Rose, 'And you were brilliant.' He took a deep breath and moved towards the door, murmuring, 'Blimey!' before stepping out of the TARDIS with Rose on his tail and Jack pulling Winter behind.

A cacophony of Dalek screams assaulted her ears and she looked around in fear and shock. The air was filled with Daleks floating throughout the ship. She swallowed and felt a tremor of nervous laughter escape her lips. That's not exactly what she'd imagined. Giant floating pepper pots.

The Doctor turned to call Donna but the door suddenly slammed shut and he raced back over. They could hear Donna banging at the door from inside but the Doctor swore it wasn't him. He turned to look at Winter. She let go of Jack's hand and stuck hers in the air.

'Don't look at me, I didn't do it.'

The Doctor rounded on the large red Dalek on the stand and yelled at him.

'What did you do?'

The Dalek answered in a deep rasping voice. 'This is not of Dalek origin.'

'Stop it! She's my friend, now open the door and let her out!' he shouted.

'This is Time Lord treachery.'

The Doctor frowned at the Dalek and put a hand to his chest. 'Me? The door just closed on its own!'

'Nevertheless,' The Dalek answered. 'The TARDIS is a weapon and it will be destroyed.'

A trap door opened beneath the TARDIS and Winter gasped as it fell. She felt Jack wrap an arm around her.

'What are you doing? Bring it back!' The Doctor yelled. 'What've you done, where's it going?'

'The Crucible has a heart of Z-Neutrino Energy. The TARDIS will be deposited into the core.'

The Doctor was horrified, anyone could see that. 'You can't, you've taken the defences down, it'll be torn apart!'

Winter's eyes darted between the Dalek and the space where the TARDIS had been. She looked up at Jack with fear in her eyes. 'Pip,' she whispered.

He looked back, sorrow written all over his face but it turned to panic when she suddenly cried out in pain.

The Doctor span back around to look at her. She was hunched over with Jack holding her sides, one arm clutched to her stomach and her eyes widened by shock. He turned back to the Dalek and pointed at Winter.

'Please! She's connected to the TARDIS, if it dies she dies! You have to bring it back!'

'The female and the TARDIS will perish together. Observe!'

A holographic screen appeared and Winter looked up through half lidded eyes to see the TARDIS bobbing in the energy field. Hot flushes bathed her skin like being wrapped in a duvet in a packed train carriage on a hot day. She was panting but she could barely feel it, sweating so much that Jacks hands slid across her slick skin and she fell to the floor. When she looked down she could see the gold beneath her skin as it flushed with no pattern or control.

She groaned heavily and felt Jack lay her back on the floor, hovering over her and wiping her forehead, talking to her, quietly begging her to hold on, to stay. 'Come on Nemo, You're fine. You're fine. You're going to make it, you're so strong you can do this.'

The Dalek's voice interrupted Jack and grated on her mind as the TARDIS's singing disappeared and was replaced with an odd moaning sound. 'The last child of Gallifrey is powerless. You are connected to the TARDIS. Now feel it die!' she had no idea if this last statement was to her or the Doctor but as she twisted and turned on the floor as if in a nightmare, she knew she would be feeling it none the less.

She heard the Dalek's countdown. She heard soft singing. Then blackness.

TTT

Jack froze as her hand went limp in his, his mouth opened in shock and he dropped his ear to her chest, then her mouth. No heartbeat. No breath. He opened her eyes but they were dull and lifeless. 'No,' he moaned, quietly. 'Come back, Nemo. Don't… No… Come back.

He could hear someone crying quietly near him. Could hear The Doctor saying his name. He heard them, but he chose to ignore it. Clenching his hands together he began trying to revive her, compressing her chest more than he would have liked. He was sure he must have broken a rib but she wasn't coming back to him, so he would keep going. Breath after breath passed from his lungs to hers but nothing made any difference.

He felt small, gentle hands pull him back from her and finally looked up at Rose and then The Doctor who had tears on his cheeks. Why? She wasn't. She wasn't and he…

Rose knelt beside him and squeezed his arm and he looked at her almost confused by this outpouring of emotion from his friends. He looked back at Winter and held up his manipulator shaking as he ran it over her, scanning. The Doctor moved closer and knelt opposite as the results came through and Jack seemed to take them like a physical kick to the gut. He hunched over, panting and looking at her like she was a statue he'd just knocked from a high plinth in a museum.

Despite the growing numbness and panic, the supreme Dalek's voice made it through to him. It was talking to The Doctor who turned and stood above them between Winter and the Daleks. Jack could begin to feel the rage boiling inside him.

'The TARDIS has been destroyed. Your friend is dead. Now tell me, Doctor. What do you feel? Anger? Sorrow? Despair?'

'Yeah.'

'Then if emotions are so important, surely we have enhanced you?'

Jack snapped. He pulled out the hand gun strapped to Winter's waist and pointed it at the Dalek. Knowing it would do no good but feeling anything was better than nothing. Besides, there was always a plan B.

'Yeah? Feel this!' He unloaded the weapon at the Dalek, emptying the barrel.

The death ray felt good. Like he was alive again. The pain breaking through his grief and turning it into something he could easily deal with.

He collapsed. Dead.

TTT

Ten minutes later Jack awoke in the incinerator. The Daleks had dumped him inside and then left, but he was not alone. He sat motionless for a few moments until he could force himself to look at her. She looked tired, grey, dead.

Pushing back his crushing guilt and sorrow, Jack picked Winter up and carried her out of the incinerator, finding a small storage room that looked mostly unused and laying her down. She may be dead but he wasn't leaving her to be burnt to a crisp like her brother. He hoped to be able to get back in time to take her body home but he knew the likelihood was low.

He could almost imagine the grief on Ianto's face. It would break him. God, he would have to tell them. If he couldn't get her back he would have to explain that he had left her here, thousands of miles from home, possibly blown to pieces along with an entire Dalek fleet. And that was only if they won.

He took a shuddering breath and brushed a stray hair away from her face and kissed her lips one last time before tearing himself away and pulling the covering off the ventilation shaft. This looked like his only way out.

'Rachy Babes': I love Ianto and Winter at the moment. I think I felt a bit like Jack kept taking centre stage so I had to slip a bit more Ianto in and he's so easy to weave into conversation with Winter. Yes, no one likes sulking Jack, he needed to man up. Hurrah for extra chapters of Wonderland. At this rate I'm going to need rehab when it's finished.

'The Small But Powerful One': Thank you, I'm so glad you like it.

'Aviarianna O Lorien': Thanks, I'm quite eclectic in my music tastes (basically anything I can sing along to) It's always good to know you're enjoying the music as well as the story. Honestly sometimes I take longer picking a track than I do writing the bloody chapters.

'sonotalady': Ah! So my story DOES have magic qualities. Awesome! Ha! Doctor dancing to Lady GaGa that I would pay to see :) I think Winter knows Jack better than even Ianto sometimes. She's the one who's travelled with him, met him before his guard was up and listened to him when he was drunk and rambling. He'd be lost without her and he knows it. no no missy, you're not getting any spoilers, you just have to wait and see what goes down.