Good evening friends! Quick update for you! Sorry for any spelling mistakes, I really just rushed through this one. I apologise for the next chapter or two being short ones, I promise that they're necessary. Please enjoy!

*Everything belongs to the BBC except Nebula, she's mine!*


"Dear Rassilon," Nebula breathed as she stared at the Doctor's police box. "That's a TARDIS, isn't it?"

"The only one left," he said with a slightly proud smile. She placed a hand on the blue wood of the door and looked up at it in wonder.

"Why is it a police box?" she asked, querking a questioning eyebrow. "Broken chameleon circuit?"

"I- yeah," he huffed, not bothering to lie about it like usual. Humans didn't know how a TARDIS worked so they hardly ever questioned its appearance. When they did ask, the Doctor would lie. Say that it was meant to look like that, but a Timelord wasn't so easy to fool.

"I haven't seen a TARDIS in… well, 521 years," Nebula said as she rested her forehead against the wood of the time machine. "Started to think I'd never see one again."

"Well, you best get used to it," River said with a happy smile as she sorted through the still smoking remains of the Cybermen, picking up whatever pieces of weaponry she could find. "Now that he's found you, I don't think the Doctor's ever going to let you out of his sight."

"Wait," Nebula turned quickly to look the Doctor in the eye. "I can come with you?"

"Only if you want to," he said quietly, avoiding her gaze for fear that she'll see the guilt in his eyes.

"Why me?"

"I don't really want to leave you behind," he said sadly, running a hand through his already messy hair. "You know, what with us being the last Timelords in the universe."

Nebula's excited smile vanished as a look of shock replaced it. "What? What do you mean 'the last Timelords'?"

The Doctor stared at her, his mouth slightly open. He exchanged a fearful look with River, her face mirroring his.

"You don't know," River stated quietly. "How can you not know?"

Nebula's shocked expression melted into one of great sorrow, like a cloud finally opening up and releasing the rain it had been carrying for weeks. "W-we lost the war didn't we?"

"Nobody won the war and nobody lost," he stated sadly, sitting down slowly on the blue-green grass the carpeted the ground. "Sit down and I'll… I'll tell you what happened."

Nebula sank to the ground with a sigh. River walked over and joined them both on the floor, resting her head on her husband's shoulder as he told Nebula his story – the story of how the greatest race in the universe was torn apart.

"By the sound of it, you were there for a part of the war-"

"I was very young. Too young to remember much…"

"Then you will have seen what it was like," the Doctor muttered, memories he had been trying to forget rushing back. "The final days were brutal. So much death and destruction. So much bloodshed. So many innocent lives lost. Rassilon was desperate to end it. He proposed the Ultimate Sanctum. All of creation would be destroyed – all of time and space – and The Time Lords would become non-corporeal beings, creatures of pure consciousness existing without time."

"Like ghosts?" Nebula asked.

"Yes, exactly! Well, not at all, but if it makes you understand it better, then yes," he said, exasperated by the interruption.

"So, what you're saying is the Time Lords were going to end the Time war by destroying all of creation where they would exist as ghost-like beings floating through the smoke and debris of what was left of the universe."

"Yep."

"The Time Lords seriously believed that the survival of their race was more important than the survival of the universe?" she asked incredulously. "Doesn't that just seem a tad pretentious?"

"Yes well, there's a Timelord for you," River sighed and her husband smiled.

"You stopped them, didn't you?" Nebula questioned, anxious to find out the ending of the story.

"Yes, of course I did," he said, his eyes downcast again. "I couldn't let them just destroy the universe. More lives would be lost then saved. So… I stopped them," he took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair.

"Gallifrey was destroyed. The Time Lords and the Daleks disappeared from time and space. The war was time-locked making it impossible to revisit the events. Our people… were lost."

They sat in silence for several minutes, giving Nebula time to process all this. 521 years of not knowing if her people survived was tough enough, but then discovering that the only other Timelord in existence other than herself was the one that killed them? That was just cruel.

"I'm sorry, Nebula," the Doctor said, struggling to keep his voice steady. "I'm so sorry."

He braced himself for the anger, the yelling of verbal abuse and the hurt of the clawing of fingernails. He expected no less of the woman sitting in front of him. He hadn't just murdered his people, no, now he'd murdered her's too. Her family and friends, her home. They were gone because of him.

Instead, she simply leaned forward and placed a hand on his chest in an old Gallifreyan gesture of forgiveness.

"And you are forgiven," she said with a brilliant smile, tears running down her face.

The Doctor let out a breathless laugh and hugged her. Words couldn't describe his joy. Joy at finally being forgiven for what he'd done. Sure, he was still going to hate himself for what he did, still going to be plagued by nightmares of his dying people, but some of his guilt, at least, was erased. Replaced by a bittersweet happiness at no longer being the last of his kind.


Hope you liked it! Please review if you have the time :D