Hey everyone! New chapter! I tried to do as fast as possible. Like always don't forget to tell me what you think of it. I love having feedback.
A million thanks to my beta penandpaper83, she's awesome.

Chapter 12

After a few minutes of running in a tense silence, and the distance between themselves and Cobb and his men growing by the minute, they finally began to relax enough to slow down. Which Tony, who was getting winded by the sprint, was all too happy join in.

"So, are you all travelling together?" Tony asked, partly out of curiosity and partially to cut the tension.

"First of all, don't ever scare me again like that again!" Rose ordered as she spun on her heel and punched Tony in the arm, making him jump in a combinations of surprise and pain. "And if you do it again, you're grounded for the next ten years! Are we clear?"

Tony acquiesced with surprised eyes, exchanging a frightened look with the Doctor, who was nervous that he was next on Rose's list. But he was saved by an amused Donna.

"Just me and the Doctor. I only met Rose yesterday. But the Doctor and her used to travel together. As did Martha at one point."

"Oh!" He said surprised before turning to Rose. "Why did you stop?"

Rose had a nervous smile, looking all around her except for the Doctor, who was looking at the ceiling with a somber mood. "Let's just say that at first, it wasn't really by choice. And after...Well it's not really the kind of story you can tell while running away from bad guys…"

Tony nodded for a few seconds before looking at Donna brightly. "Can I come with you after? I want to see other planets and the things you talked about!"

"Of course you can come!" enthused Rose and the Doctor before looking at each other surprised by their simultaneous outburst. This made Donna laugh so hard she had to stop and lean onto the wall to not fall over, making them all stop as they looked at her with different degree of surprise.

"You'll have to share custody! That's hilarious." She laughed louder. "So what are you gonna do? One week in the TARDIS then one week at UNIT? If you do that, I will pay big money to see that."

"Don't be silly Donna," said the Doctor annoyed. "We let Tony chose." But his response only made Donna continue to laugh. "Human sometimes I swear…" he muttered.

Rose rolled her eyes at his remark, like he was any better than them. "Tony is an adult, well technically, If he wants to come with one of us, then that doesn't mean he won't have a means to contact the other. Yes, I will be going back to UNIT after we're finished here." She pretended to not see the wounded look on the Doctor face at her announcement. "But if Tony wants to travel a little with the Doctor that's fine. That's why mobiles exist. As long as I can see him from time to time." She smiled fondly at her son. "I just want him to be happy."

And that's she could ever want for him. And if that meant see him leave for some time with the Doctor, well she could accept and support that. She already loved Tony deeply, but she was nowhere ready to be a full-time mom, nor have someone depending on her for a long period of time. She still sometimes had difficulty tending for herself correctly. Seeing the state of her life right now, and what she was supposed to do, it was probably for the best for the Doctor to stay with Tony. He could teach and protect him. And she could still arrange to see him enough to keep an eyes on him. Just in case what she thought would could happen in the future came to fruition.

"What is it like going to other planets?" asked Tony, his head already in the stars, making Rose tear up a little. He really looked like her when she was younger. Always dreaming big, and she was so happy that nobody will tell him otherwise. He'll get dream all he wants, and go as far he wanted to go. And just like for her, it was the Doctor who will make the dreams real. Like mother like son in an ironic way.

"Oh, never a dull moment. It can be terrifying, brilliant and funny, sometimes all at the same time. And a lot of time running. It's like we never stop sometimes," said Donna, her full attention on Tony and his eyes full of dreams. "You'll love it!"

"We're not always running!" the Doctor protested. "It's just the bit in between." He started to scratch his chin. "Well…okay lot of bit in between...But I swear that's not not my intention most of the time."

"Yeah right," Donna snorted. "Hey Donna, let's take tea in this gorgeous planet. I swear they're peaceful! And then not even half an hour later, I'm trying to depose a murderous tyrant while trying not to be ran over by that beanpole on a bicycle."

"Hey it was one time!" protested the Doctor as they started to bicker over their accounts of the event while Tony's head bobbed like he was watching a tennis match.

Rose smiled as she observed the three. She was so happy that he had Donna. They seemed to go on like a house on fire. She started to move forward, deciding to let them have their fun until they realize that she was advancing. But her peace did not hold for long as she realized not even ten meters in front of her a piece of the wall was starting to crumble under the pressure of an heavy object, making her realize that Cobb had probably decided on another route. She ran in the other direction, just as the wall was blasted away, passing her three others companion who looked around surprised.

"They've blasted through the beams!" She screamed. "Time to move!"

"Great! Love the running!" the Doctor said happily, while following her as Donna and Tony were going full blast beside him. But they were not running very far as they were suddenly in front of a dead end.

"We're trapped," said Donna as Rose was hitting the wall at different place, hoping to open what was visibly a closed door.

"Can't be! This must be the Temple door," continued the Doctor, standing next to Rose with his sonic screwdriver.

Donna was the only one still looking around, as Tony had started to help the other two. "And again, we're down to one two now," she said distractly while looking at the number.

The Doctor jumped a little as the door started to make a sound. "I think I've got it!"

Rose threw a nervous look behind her as the sound of Cobb was coming closer and closer. "Yeah, but now would be better!"

"I'm nearly done," he replied, his attention fully on the door which was making more and more sound.

Donna touched one of the numbers. "These can't be a cataloguing system," she muttered more for herself than the others.

"Got it!" screamed the Doctor, just as Rose and Tony finished forcing open the door, letting them finally escape.

"Woah that was close!" Tony exclaimed just as the Doctor closed the door on Cobb and his men.

The Doctor smiled in his direction. "Not fun otherwise." But the only response he gained was a hit on the shoulder by Rose. He turned a wounded look to Donna, but the woman was too busy looking around to see what happened.

"It's not what I'd call a temple," Donna observed with a clearly impressed tone.

Rose examined one of the walls, touching the machinery closely and turned a curious look to the Doctor who was sonicing another part. "More like a spaceship, no?"

He nodded absently. "Fusion drive transport more exactly."

"What, like the original one? The one the first colonists arrived in?" asked Donna.

The Doctor shrugged as he couldn't really be sure. "Well, it could be. But the power cells would have run down after a while. This one is still powered-up and functioning." He pushed Tony in the direction of the stairs. "Come on."

As they headed up a flight of stairs, they realized that someone was cutting their way through another door.

"I think it's the Hath," said Tony with a highly concerned look. "That door is not going to last much longer. And if General Cobb gets through, war will break out." He exchanged a worried look with Rose this time, but as he turned to ask the Doctor something, he realized that the man was nowhere to be found.

" Look, look, look, look, look. Ship's log." They heard the Doctor calling from another part of the spaceship. When they joined him, he was looking at a screen displaying what looked like some sort of official report.

"Messaline Leader One mission log designation XG2482942-372" He started to read while Rose was looking over his shoulder.

"So this was the original ship. I wonder what happened?" Donna mused.

The Doctor signed. "Phase one: Construction. They used robot drones to build the city."

As Rose was reading, she didn't see anything about what she was the most interested in. "Nothing on the war..."

"Wait…" said the Doctor, before turning page for a few seconds, using his speed reading to search for what was interesting Rose the most, all while Tony began to look around, interested at was basically his history. "Ah found it! look!" The Doctor showed Rose part of the document, while reading it aloud for Donna, who was behind them and visibly becoming more frustrated by the second. "Mission commander dead. Still no agreement on who should assume leadership. Hath and humans have divided into factions. That must be it. A power vacuum. The crew divided into two factions and turned on each other. Start using the progenation machines, and suddenly you've got two armies fighting a never-ending war."

"And now they're both outside," Tony warned while still touching and probing everything. Something that reminded Rose of the Doctor with fondness. How many times did she have to stop him touching everything and starting a diplomatic incident? She wondered if it's was something that changed.

"Oh look at that!" exclaimed Donna as a number was being lit by the screen showing the whole planet.

The Doctor dismissed it with a wave, too busy trying to decipher the different volumes around him. "Yeah it's like the numbers in the tunnels."

She frowned, gesticulating in excitement. "No, no, no, no. Listen, I spent six months working as a temp in Hounslow Library, and I mastered the Dewey Decimal System in two days flat. I'm good with numbers. It's staring us in the face."

"What do you mean?" asked Rose with curiosity, lifting her head from the book she was immersed in.

"It's the date," Donna answered smiling more and more. "Assuming the first two numbers are some big old space date, then you've got year, month, day. It's the other way round, like it is in America."

"Oh!" the Doctor screamed, making everyone jump in surprise. "It's the New Byzantine Calendar."

"The codes are completion dates for each section." Donna was now looking more and more excited, jumping on what the Doctor was saying, making him smile more like a madman by the second. "They finish it, they stamp the date on. So the numbers aren't counting down, they're going out from here, day by day, as the city got built."

"Yes. Oh, good work, Donna." The Doctor had a pleased expression, even if Rose had didn't really followed what happened. And at the face of Tony she was not the only one.

But the redhead was not finished. "Yeah. But you're still not getting it. The first number I saw back there, was sixty twelve oh seven seventeen. Well, look at the date today."

"Oh seven twenty four." The Doctor shook his head in pure disbelief. "No."

"Ok, can someone explain what's going on to those in the room who don't know what you're talking about?" asked Tony with Rose nodding in the background.

The face of the Doctor dropped, becoming somber by the second. "Seven days."

"That's it. Just seven days," Donna echoed him in a manner of confirmation.

Rose rolled her eyes. She was seriously fed up with all the mystery. Would it kill someone to be straightforward sometimes? "And what exactly do you mean by seven days?"

"Seven days since war broke out," the Doctor answered simply. "This war started seven days ago. Just a week. A week!"

Tony frowned, sitting down on of the nearby boxes. "No, that's not possible. They told us years."

"No, they said generations," Donna answered gently. "And if they're all like you, and they're products of those machines."

"They could have twenty generations in a day. Each generation gets killed in the war, passes on the legend," commented the Doctor, not really looking at anything, already calculating something in his head. "Donna, you're a genius." This made Donna smile proudly.

"But…" Rose was confused. She specifically remembered the antiquated look of the machinery when they pushed her arm in. "Everything is in ruin."

"No, they're not ruined," replied the Doctor as he took out his specs already getting into his 'teacher mode'. "They're just empty. Waiting to be populated. Oh, they've mythologised their entire history. The Source must be part of that too." He helped Tony get up and nudged Donna. "Come on."

They began to walk in silence, everyone mulling over the revelation before literally running into Martha as they were turning a corner. They looked at each other in surprise for a few seconds before Martha jumped into the Doctor's embrace.

"Doctor!" she exclaimed, happy to be reunited with her friends.

"Martha!" the Doctor squealed with delight while returning her hug with happiness. "Oh, I should have known you wouldn't stay away from the excitement."

"Martha!" Rose nudged the Doctor - who protested loudly about who was being the rude one this time - out of the way. She hugged Martha, happy to see her alive. "Oh god I'm so happy to see you! I was so anxious when I didn't see you after the dust cleared."

Martha smiled fondly, touched by Rose's concern. "I was okay, don't worry."

"Oh, you're filthy. What happened?" asked Donna as Rose stepped back.

Martha shrugged. "I, er, took the surface route."

The only person not really approaching Martha was Tony, preferring to stay in the background, not really sure about what he was supposed to do in this situation. But he still smiled at Rose, who looked at him with a slight motherly concern when she realized that he was not beside them.

But the moment was broken when multiple shots and screams were heard from behind the wall, indicating that the confrontation was well on its way.

"So...Time to stop a war?" Rose asked cheekily to the Doctor, who only smiled in response, taking her hand as a sure gesture. And just like that, they started running just like old times.

They were waiting for war and horror, but were surprised to drop in a middle of vast space filled with flower and life, making them all stop in surprise.

"Wow that's...Beautiful!" Tony said reverently as he looked around in fascination. Overwhelmed by all the beauty around him. And Rose could only wordlessly agree with him as she brushed a few flowers.

"Is that the Source?" asked Donna as she walked up to a glowing globe on a pedestal with wires running to it.

"What is this place?" Martha asked as she looked around curiously.

The Doctor took out his sonic and guided all around the globe Donna was trying not to touch. "Terraforming. It's a third generation terraforming device," he said while deciphering the reading of the sonic.

Donna opened her mouth to finish asking her earlier question, but she was interrupted by the Hath and the soldiers running in from opposite sides trapping them in the middle of the conflict.

"Stop! Hold your fire!" the Doctor commanded, jumping in front of a startled Donna as the rest of the group gathered around them ready for a fight. Especially Tony and Rose, who had her weapon out.

But Cobb didn't care about the Doctor's pleading as his weapon was still directed in the Hath's direction. "What is this, some kind of trap?" he asked with venom in his voice.

"You said you wanted this war over," answered the Doctor with his head held high. Like everytime he was sure he had won. And that only increased Rose's anxious state, as she knew how that ended most of the time.

And she was right to be worried, as Cobb was clearly not in a peaceful mode. "I want this war won," he spat, his weapon now aimed directly at the Doctor, making Rose and Tony instantly move aside to try and protect him. But the Doctor only pushed them aside, taking a step forward, a speech already on his lips.

"You can't win," he began passionately. "No one can. You don't even know why you're here. Your whole history, it's just Chinese whispers, getting more distorted the more it's passed on." He moved around, trying to touch as much people as possible, fully immersed in his role. "This is the Source." He pointed to the globe. "This is what you're fighting over. A device to rejuvenate a planet's ecosystem. It's nothing mystical. It's from a laboratory, not some creator. It's a bubble of gases. A cocktail of stuff for accelerated evolution."

Rose looked around, realizing it was working as more and more people were starting to lower their weapons. Even their group, who knew the Doctor and what he was capable of, were enthralled by his words, making her have faith once again that this would end well.

"Methane. Hydrogen. Ammonia. Amino acids. Proteins. Nucleic acids. It's used to make barren planets habitable. Look around you. It's not for killing, it's bringing life. If you allow it, it can lift you out of these dark tunnels and into the bright, bright sunlight. No more fighting, no more killing." And after a few seconds of silence, as everyone was looking at the life around them, he took out the globe and smiled. " I'm the Doctor, and I declare this war is over." Then without another word, he throwed the globe onto the floor where it exploded and released gas and energy.

As everyone watched it slowly rise up, they started to put down their weapons one by one, fascinated by the ballet around them. All except Cobb.

"What's happening?" Tony asked as he stood beside the Doctor, looking with a childlike delight as the different light and movement.

The Doctor smiled at him, then his eyes found Rose's eyes who was radiating happiness. "The gases will escape and trigger the terraforming process."

"And what does that mean?" Tony inquired.

He looked at Donna who was amusing herself with one of the particule, and then to Martha who was laughing with one of the Hath and felt peace for the first time in a long time. "It means a new World."

Rose and the Doctor were looking at each other once again, soft looks in each of their eyes, soaking in the brief happiness, when the Doctor was suddenly pushed aside by a blur. As he hit the ground hard, he heard the unmistakable sound of a bullet being shot from someone's weapon and felt his blood ran cold.

Rose had heard a grunt, realizing what happened just as she saw the second body crumbling into himself. He seemed to hit the floor in the slowest motion possible, his blood already spilling into the soil.

"TONY NO!" She screamed in horror.