Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.

Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading this and for the follows, fave's and reviews. I'm getting close(ish) to the end now and although there are loads of things that I'll probably go back and change because they don't really say what I wanted them to – plus the continuity glitches – oops! Anyway… despite that, I'm loving writing it!

Reviews, as always, are really appreciated

Chapter 18

It was late afternoon in the centre of Cardiff. The August sun was still high in the sky and the heat was baking into every surface making pavements shimmer and the roads sticky. The rush hour traffic was a blare of horns and thick, choking fumes while pedestrians trudged, sluggishly through the muggy haze.

The Doctor and Jack were in a back street café and had been for a while. The sun blazed brightly through the large front windows, glaring blindingly off the wobbly, plastic table they were working on. Jack's skin was glistening and prickling uncomfortably with sweat.

It had taken him quite a while to find, and then illegally obtain, the access codes to the data captured by the NASA satellite, and he and the Doctor were now absorbed in translating the columns of numbers to draw a picture of the actual wavelengths being emitted around the void.

"I can't find anything wrong with the numbers…" The Doctor sighed, finishing the last of his now, cold tea. "I think it's really there Jack, or not there if you get my meaning, but what I don't get is if it's been there all this time, how come I've not seen it before?"

He paused, thoughtfully as he pushed his mug away and sat back, palms on the table, looking up at the ceiling.

"That is, of cause, unless… maybe, it hasn't happened yet!" He finished with sudden fervour.

"You think that something happened in the future? And we're seeing it already?"

"Well, yeah, maybe…. Think about it, Jack! If something's powerful enough to cause a rip in space nearly two billion light years wide, then I think it's fair to assume that it would also be able to punch a hole in the universe big enough to cause the future to echo back into the past."

"You're talking about a wormhole?"

"Well… if that is the case, then this certainly ain't been caused by no worm!" the Doctor declared getting up. "Come on! I really need to get out there and see this!"

Just before they re-entered the TARDIS, the Doctor stalled Jack abruptly, with a hand on his sleeve.

"When I go out there I need you to stay here with Rose." The Doctor said seriously.

"You're leaving us behind?"

"I dunno what's out there. It's almost certainly dangerous and I don't want to expose Rose to anything like that. I told you, she's not supposed to be here. She's still not safe and Jack…" He, looked at his friend earnestly. "If I don't come back, there's no one I trust to keep her safe more than you."

"You think you might not come back? Doctor, then we should come with you!"

"Well… yeah, course I'll be back, course I will! Course! But… you know… just in case."

"Rose!" he called out as they stepped through the TARDIS doors into the empty console room. They'd left her disgruntled and sulky on the captain's chair, but they'd been gone for a few hours and she'd probably gone off into the TARDIS' interior, exploring.

"Rose!" he yelled even louder, blowing out a sigh of exasperation when there was no response. "Oh, right, typical… she's wandered off somewhere, come on – let's go find her."

The door to the room where he was growing the new TARDIS was slightly open. The Doctor frowned as he pushed it all the way and stepped inside, why would she come in here?

His breath caught in a horrified gasp when he saw her. She was lying next to the, now dormant, 'baby' TARDIS, her limbs bent awkwardly as though she had fallen.

"ROSE!" he rushed to her side, dropping to his knees, his hand sweeping her jaw to feel for a pulse. He breathed a pent up sigh of relief when he felt it, strong and normal.

"What happened?" Jack demanded, joining him.

"I dunno. She seems okay apart from the fact that she won't wake up. Breathing's normal, heart rate's normal, temperature's normal…"

He looked towards the almost formed TARDIS within the TARDIS.

"Unless…" he reached out to touch it, shocked when his hand encountered lifeless, cold, marble.

"Oh no!" he breathed, leaning back over her to pull her eyelids back, fully expecting to see a light pulsing behind her eyes, a light that would burn her out and kill her.

But there was nothing. Her eyes were clear… everything normal.

"Let's get her to the sickbay." The Doctor said, rapidly scooping her up.

"What's that?" Jack asked, indicating the white column.

"It's another TARDIS." The Doctor explained - unhelpfully, in Jack's opinion - as he carried Rose out of the room. Jack rushed ahead to get the doors.

"You've got two TARDIS's? You've never mentioned…"

"No, I've been growing it. To help Rose, only now it's… well I think it's dead."

The Doctor was perplexed. The new TARDIS, although still growing had seemed to be fulfilling its purpose well. His own TARDIS no longer screamed her agony in his head and had seemed content in helping to sustain the little growing life within her. If the new TARDIS was indeed dead then she should be screaming again, but she wasn't… in fact she was unusually silent as though her attention were elsewhere…

"How can it be dead? I mean, how can it even be alive in order to be dead?" Jack asked, impatiently as he helped the Doctor ease Rose onto the examination table.

"TARDIS's are sentient. They're grown, not built. It's a long story, Jack but I think something happened between Rose and the growing TARDIS."

But the tests he ran all told him the same thing. Everything was completely normal… there was no sign of illness or injury, no head trauma… nothing. Everything normal and healthy and good… apart from the fact that Rose could not be woken up…

dwdwdwdwdw

It was night-time, Rose decided as she sensed the blackness around her. Although maybe it wasn't night-time because night presumed the arrival of day and there was no daytime here. In fact, time didn't exist at all. Neither did the sun, or the Earth or the moon, or the stars… there was no purpose here… that was until now.

Just exactly now. Instantly, now. Where the empty nothingness which had been only timeless and black before, the endless dark suddenly shimmered with light and energy and time and meaning, as the solar system spun into existence around her.

And then she was falling. Falling into the void, but no. It couldn't be that. She'd done that, she remembered. She'd survived… and yet she was still falling. Until everything was harsh, and white and screaming in pain. The words Dårlig Ulv-Stranden carving the core out of her heart.

And then her perception switched, like changing the channel on a TV, and she was watching… watching as a dark skinned young woman hung a silver key around her neck and started running, running hand in hand and laughing with the Doctor. Her Doctor. Rose growled, possessively.

And although Rose had no physical presence here, no body, no vocal chords, no voice… the dark skinned woman turned to look over her shoulder as though she'd heard.

And then the Doctor was alone again, and Rose's heart ached with the sadness she could feel from him. He shouldn't be alone, he needed a friend, someone to stop him… and she remembered Donna Noble, who's name rang so tunefully with the Doctor's – the Doctor-Donna – Rose spun a path through time to lead Donna back to him.

And then the little blue-green planet, which had been spinning so righteously, so purposefully, so very there, below her before, was suddenly gone. The moon, bereft of a mother to cling to, stuttered from its orbit and begun falling towards the Sun.

dwdwdwdwdw

And within a dusty, disused factory on the outskirts of London, a man suddenly stopped working. His hands fell to his sides and his screwdriver clattered noisily to the floor as his fingers, numb with shock, unclenched.

And the man listened, only that. Just listened, not moving and not thinking beyond what he was not hearing.

Because the drums had stopped beating.