AN: Well, well, well. Here we are. The end of another story. Well, it's more sort of the end of a chapter, because there is simply so much left to come!

So don't worry your pretty little heads - I've got plenty of secrets I'm still keeping.

Enjoy!

Chapter 14: Journey's End

He burned with the force of a thousand suns, forcing the others to screw their eyes shut and turn their heads away. He could feel it: every cell twisting and bursting, microstructures tearing apart and reconnecting in a new order, layers of tissue constricting and reshaping. But he didn't want it. Every part of him begged for it to stop, knowing how futile it was, knowing there was no way to stop it. Except - wait. There was something he could try. It took a gargantuan effort, but he managed to move, clasping his hands together and pointing towards the underside of the console, forcing the flow of energy to stream towards the chunky jar where his hand bubbled cheerfully. Acknowledging the genetic components of the energy signature as matching its own, the hand accepted the stream of power, drinking it in greedily until there was nothing left. As the last vestiges of the energy left him, the Doctor straightened up, glancing at his reflection in the glass of the time rotor just to be sure. He was still himself.

"Excellent. Now then. Where were we?"

Sarah Jane hadn't left the car - there was no point. She wouldn't have been able to run fast enough or far enough to escape the Dalek weapons. Eyes closed, hands still in the air, all she could do was hope that her death wouldn't be as painful as they had always made it look.

"Exterminate! Extermin-"

There was an explosion, but not the one that she had thought would kill her - it had come from outside. She opened her eyes, not sure what she was expecting to see. The lower halves of the Daleks that had threatened her, streaming with smoke and covered in fronds of pink flesh, hadn't even appeared on the list. Neither had the two people who had appeared. She recognised them both - one, she'd only seen a photo of, but the other was one she knew very well.

"Mickey?"

He grinned, letting his gun hang on its strap as he opened her car door and helped her out.

"Us Smiths gotta stick together!"

Giving the nearest metal corpse a kick for good measure, the blonde woman who'd appeared with him offered Sarah Jane her hand.

"Jackie Tyler, Rose's mum. Now where the hell is my daughter?"

The repetitive hollow clicks from the guns told Gwen and Ianto that their weapons were now totally empty. But none of their bullets had landed - not a single one. That was almost more interesting than the fact that the Dalek hadn't made an attempt to fire. Every bullet was suspended in mid air, hanging there like a frozen swarm of bees. Standing closest, Gwen reached out and poked at the air around the closest bullet; it rippled like water as her finger made contact, and it felt impossibly thick.

"What the hell?"

Tossing his gun aside, Ianto went to the nearest back of computers and checked for the programming he suspected was behind the odd occurrence. "It's a Time Lock. The ultimate defence programme. Tosh was working on it. Never thought she finished it, but… she did. There's bits of fringe code here with a different digital tag though… oh. User registration is just the letter 'E'. Guess we know why Tosh spent so long on the phone then. So. The Hub's sealed in a time bubble. Nothing can get in."

"But that means… we can't get out."

"Nope. Not without unlocking that Dalek. We're trapped inside. It's all up to Jack now."

Tapping the glass that held his hand, the Doctor blew at it gently, dispersing the last trails of energy that were left behind. "There now. All sorted. You see? Used the regeneration energy to heal myself, but as soon as I was done… well, I didn't need to change. I didn't want to. Why would I? 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. Remember? Christmas Day, Sycorax. Lost my hand in a sword fight? That's my hand. What do you think?"

The others just stared at him incredulously - it was all they'd been capable of doing since the entire process started. First to recover, Eris shook her head.

"What do I think? Reckless, stupid, a decision that's definitely going to bite you in the arse in the future… oh, and that you need to learn to look where you're going."

His grin drooped. "Oh."

"And… that I'm just glad you're okay. Try not to do that again any time soon." He brightened slightly at that and opened his arms, his usual beaming grin springing back into place the moment she wrapped her arms around him.

Rose was still staring, not entirely convinced that the transformation wasn't happening. She desperately wanted to hug him, hold him as tight as possible and never let go, but… were they sure that nothing had changed?

"You're still… you?"

He nodded, seeing the dilemma in her eyes and taking a step closer. "I'm still me."

Same voice, same smile, same little twinkle in his eyes - that was enough evidence for her. As she threw herself at him, dragging Eris with her so that the three of them were smashed together the way their best hugs had always been in the past, Donna batted her eyelashes at Jack.

"You can hug me, if you want. No, really. You can hug me."

We may never know whether or not Jack would have taken Donna up on that offer - or order, depending on how you interpret it. Because before he could give a proper response, the power failed, plunging them into darkness. Instinctively all hands were on the console, pressing buttons and pulling levers, trying everything they could to get a flicker of a response. Nothing. The Doctor groaned. "They've got us. Power's gone. Some kind of chronon loop."

The way that the floor tipped beneath them, like they were on a boat pitching in a storm, made Eris' next comment a bit redundant. "Well. We're on the move."

Tucked behind an abandoned van, Sarah Jane, Jackie and Mickey watched on with dismay as a quartet of Daleks surrounded the Tardis, circling once before the ship lifted, captured within a pale blue cylindrical beam.

"Transferring Tardis to the Crucible."

Having spotted the large yellow buttons that the others wore on chains around their necks, Sarah Jane had managed to put two and two together. "Those teleport things. Can we use them? If they've taken the Doctor to the Dalek spaceship, then that's where we need to be."

Mickey shook his head. "It's not just a teleport, it's a dimension jump. Man, this thing rips a hole in the fabric of space."

"But can we use it?"

"Not yet. It burns up energy. Needs half an hour between jumps."

"Then put down your guns."

"Do what?"

"If you're carrying a gun, they'll shoot you dead." And before the others could discourage her, she stepped out into the street, fully visible. "Daleks, I surrender!"

The nearest one turned to face her. "All humans in this sector will be taken to the Crucible."

Mickey hissed under his breath. "She's bloody mad!"

Jackie, however, was already laying her gun down. "Yeah, but Mickey… if they've got the Doctor, then they've got Rose. I'm going." She raised her voice as she stood. "And us. We surrender."

Well, she hadn't exactly given him much of a choice. Kissing the gun, he tossed it to the pavement and followed her into the path of danger.

Loathe to do it, but knowing she had no other choice, Martha strapped the Project Indigo rucksack back on and tried to smile at her mum. "Now Jack's explained the base code, I know how this teleport works. I think. But you just stay indoors. There's no Daleks on this street. You should be all right. Just er, keep quiet."

Francine could see the tears gathering in her daughter's eyes. "But where are you going?"

"I'm a member of UNIT, and they gave me the Osterhagen Key. I've got to do my job. I'm sorry."

"Martha. What's an Osterhagen Key? Tell me. What does it do?"

"I love you."

She pulled the ripcords and her vision dissolved into nothingness. The first thing she became aware of when everything normalised was wetness against her back - she'd landed in a small thicket of trees, flat against the mulchy floor. Getting to her feet slowly gave her senses the chance to re-acclimatise after the rough jump. The smell of smoke wafting from the distance. The way the damp ground shone in the moonlight. The sound of screams from the nearby town. And the Daleks.

"Exterminieren! Exterminieren!"

"Halt! Sonst werden wir Sie exterminieren! Sie sind jetzt ein Gefangener der Daleks!"

"Exterminieren. Exterminieren."

Her understanding of German wasn't exactly expansive, but she found that their chanting didn't particularly need translation. Their message of hatred was clear enough.

Having given up on trying to do anything with the controls, the group within the Tardis stood in a little cluster near the railings while Jack finished detailing what the experience had been like on the planet below. "There's a massive Dalek ship at the centre of the planets. They're calling it the Crucible. Guess that's our destination."

Donna still had questions she wanted answers to. "You said these planets were like an engine. But what for?"

There was a moment of quiet before the Doctor shrugged. "Well, I'm not sure. Rose, you've been in a parallel world. That world's running ahead of this universe. You've seen the future. What was it?"

She chewed at the inside of her cheek before replying. "It's the darkness. The, er… the stars were going out. One by one. We looked up at the sky and they were just dying. Basically, we've been building this, er, this travel machine, this, this er, dimension cannon, so I could… Well, so I could…"

"What?"

"So I could come back." She felt her cheeks flushed as her best friends smirked at each other, Eris with an eyebrow raised and the Doctor clearly fighting off a grin. "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."

A heavy feeling began to form in the pit of Donna's stomach - most of her memories of the time she had spent in the other world were gone, but there were fragments of her last moments that still clung to the edges, and being around Rose again just seemed to make them stronger. "In that parallel world… you said something about me."

"The dimension cannon could measure timelines, and it's, it's weird, Donna, but they all seemed to converge on you."

"But why me? I mean, what have I ever done? I'm a temp from Chiswick."

Eris rolled her eyes. "Stop that. Seriously, stop. Everywhere we've been, everything we've done. You've been the person to spot the missing piece of the puzzle so many times! There's people walking about in their own space and time who wouldn't be, if you hadn't been with us. And you've made us better people. You are so, so important, Donna Noble, and you are so loved. And I won't ever let you forget it."

Overcome with emotions - and strangely, aware of that odd pounding in her head again, Donna struggled to come up with a response to that. But she was saved by the bell - or rather, the scanner beeping.

Glancing at it, the Doctor's face fell. "The Dalek Crucible. All aboard."

"The Tardis is secured."

"Doctor, you will step forth or die."

"We'll have to go out. Because if we don't, they'll get in."

Rose frowned. "You told me nothing could get through those doors!"

Jack agreed. "And you've got extrapolator shielding!"

Closest to the doors, Eris looked over her shoulder. "You're forgetting something. Last time, they weren't this strong. We dealt with the leftovers, insane scavengers clinging to life with all their suckery might. This is different. Davros' creations, from scratch… this is a Dalek Empire at the height of its power, all shiny and new and ready to conquer."

The Doctor concurred. "They're experts at fighting Tardises, they can do anything. Right now, that wooden door is just wood."

Around her, the conversation faded out as Donna's mind focused on the peculiar pounding that was filling her head once again. There was something comforting about it, but unsettling at the same time. Oxymoronic, obviously, but she couldn't figure out how to describe it any better. That's partly why she hadn't mentioned it to the others - not that they had really noticed she wasn't listening to their conversation.

"What about your dimension jump?"

Jack's question made Rose shake her head. "It needs another twenty minutes. And anyway, I'm not leaving."

The Doctor glanced at the other man's wrist. "What about your teleport?"

"Went down with the power loss."

"Right then. All of us together. Yeah. Donna?" Finally, he noticed that she was staring off into the distance. "Donna?"

She blinked a few times. "Yeah!"

"I'm sorry. There's nothing else we can do."

"No, I know."

The deep booming voice from outside made each of them shudder. "Surrender, Doctor, and face your Dalek masters."

Rose chewed her lip. "Daleks."

Next to her, Jack looked like he was on the verge of passing out. "Oh, God."

Putting on his bravest face, the Doctor smiled at each of them - Donna, Jack, and Rose in turn.

"It's been good, though, hasn't it? All of us. All of it. Everything we did. You were brilliant. And you were brilliant. And you were brilliant. Blimey." He set eyes on his daughter, and reached across to squeeze her hand. "And you… I don't have enough time left to tell you just how brilliant you are."

Still holding tight, Eris ran her thumb across the back of his hand. "I know. We should go. Before the homicidal maniacs outside decide they want to desecrate the Tardis with their presence."

Each in agreement, they headed for the doors, and stepped outside.

The Crucible was overflowing with Daleks - every space was filled by the ranks of creatures watching, waiting, gloating. "Daleks reign supreme. All hail the Daleks! Daleks reign supreme. All hail the Daleks! Daleks reign supreme. All hail the Daleks!"

Everyone made it to the doors, apart from Donna. She'd paused a few feet away, struck once again by that sound - but this time it was even louder, clearer.

"Daleks reign supreme. All hail the Daleks! Daleks reign supreme. All hail the Daleks!"

Noticing that their group was one short, Eris let go and took a few steps back, one foot now inside the Tardis.

"Hey, come on. We have to stay together, no use splitting up now."

Hearing this, the Doctor looked over his shoulder. "Donna! You're no safer in there, come on."

On his little podium in the centre of the space, the Supreme Dalek spoke.

"Behold, Doctor. Behold the might of the true Dalek race."

And, just as Eris got her other foot through the doorway so she could offer Donna her hand, the Tardis doors slammed shut.

"What?!"

The back of her head stinging where the door had slammed against it, Eris swore and twisted the latch. "Dad? What the hell's going on?"

Joining her, Donna put all her weight into pulling at the door - but nothing worked. "Doctor? What have you done?"

"It wasn't me. I didn't do anything."

"Oi! Oi, I'm not staying behind!"

Terror lancing through his chest, he turned back and spat at the Dalek, "What did you do?!"

If he hadn't known that it was an impossible emotion for a Dalek to feel, he would have said that the Supreme Dalek, in this moment, sounded like a right smug bastard. "This is not of Dalek origin. This is Time Lord treachery."

"Me? This isn't me! My daughter and my friend, they're staying with us. So open the door and let them out."

"Negative. The Tardis is a weapon and it will be destroyed."

And before their very eyes, a trapdoor in the floor opened with a harsh snap, sending the Tardis plummeting downwards.

"What are you doing? Bring it back! What have you done? Where's it going?"

"The Crucible has a heart of Z-neutrino energy. The Tardis will be deposited into the core."

"You can't. You've taken the defences down. It'll be torn apart!"

Flickering from the screen above, and an image burst into life - the Tardis, bathed in molten metal, the light behind the windows stuttering and fading as they watched. On either side of the Doctor, Rose and Jack reached for him, horrified.

"But Eris and Donna are still in there!"

"Let them go!"

Impassive, the Supreme Dalek just sat there. "The female and the Tardis will perish together. Observe. The last child of Gallifrey is powerless."

Tears clouding his vision, the Doctor looked like he was on the edge of dropping to his knees.

"Please. I'm begging you. I'll do anything! Put me in their place. You can do anything to me, I don't care, just get them out of there!"

"You are connected to the Tardis. Now feel it die. Total Tardis destruction in ten rels. Nine, eight, seven, six–"

When the Tardis had dropped, all hell had broken loose. Donna had clung to the nearest railing with all her might as Eris launched herself at the console, her barely healed burns from the rough previous journey splitting and blistering further as the controls exploded, more violently than before. Both women knew that there was nothing to be done, but that wasn't going to stop them trying. As the roundels on the walls began to shatter, spraying Donna with a cloud of broken glass, she staggered closer to the centre of the room, desperate to try and help her friend. And then she saw it. Something else had shattered. The jar beneath the console was broken, and laying pathetically on the metal grating was the Doctor's old hand, twitching slightly as the last pools of fluid evaporated in the heat.

The pounding in her head, the pull in her chest - for some reason she couldn't explain, she felt a deep desire to reach out and pick it up.

"Donna, what are you-?"

But when her skin made contact with it, everything around her went silent. Blinded by the surge of regeneration energy that came from the hand, frozen in place, all she could do was curl up on the floor as the power surged through her.

Startled by the sudden burst of energy, Eris ripped her jacket from her arms and gathered it around the hand, scooping it up and snatching it away from Donna's grasp. As tendrils of gold weaved their way into Donna's hair, the two of them watched, incredulous - a body was forming. The light flowed into the outline of a man before converging, creating bones and skin and some very familiar hair until-

"It's you!" Donna gasped.

"Oh, yes!"

"You're naked…"

"Oh, yes. I've got a jacket though, haven't I?" And, choosing to ignore the looks of shock on their faces - and the hint of disgust at his unclothed state in Eris' expression - the Doctor bounded over to the console, protecting what little was left of his dignity with her jacket, and slammed his hand down on a button.

"Five, four, three, two, one."

On the screen above them, the Tardis vanished. The Doctor just stared blankly, not feeling the touch of his friends on his back, his shoulder. Nothing really mattered any more.

"The Tardis has been destroyed. Now tell me, Doctor. What do you feel? Anger? Sorrow? Despair?"

He nodded numbly. "Yeah."

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

Enraged, Jack pulled his gun from his pocket. "Yeah? Then feel this!"

"Exterminate!"

He'd only managed to get one shot off before being struck down. Devastated, Rose let go of the Doctor and dropped to his side, her hands shaking as she failed to find a pulse.

"Jack. Oh, my God. Oh, no."

Running mostly on autopilot, the Doctor leant down and put an arm around her waist, pulling her away. "Rose, come here. Leave him."

"They killed him."

"I know. I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do."

Already losing interest, the Supreme Dalek barked an order to the nearest rank of Daleks.

"Escort them to the Vault. They are the playthings of Davros now."

Looking over his shoulder as they were led away, the Doctor just about caught Jack's wink.

At least that was something.

Drifting serenely in a nice, relatively safe corner of local space, the console room was in complete silence. At least, until the copy of the Doctor came back in. Eris had demanded that he go straight to the wardrobe, eyes screwed shut as she told him she wouldn't even consider having a conversation while he was still naked. She continued fiddling with the console once he was gone, her skin gradually healing back over the places where she'd been caught in the fire. By the time he came bounding back into the room - thankfully, dressed in one of his usual blue suits - there was no sign that she'd even been injured, apart from the singed bits of her top.

"All repaired. Lovely. Shush. No one knows we're here. Got to keep quiet. Silent running, like on submarines when you can't even drop a spanner. Don't drop a spanner! I like blue. What do you think?"

Finding her voice for the first time since he'd vanished, Donna scoffed. "You are bonkers!"

"Why? What's wrong with blue?"

"Is that what Time Lords do? Lop a bit off, grow another one? You're like worms."

"No, no, no, no, no. I'm unique. Never been another like me. Because all that regeneration energy went into the hand. Look at my hand. I love that hand. But then you touched it. Wham! Shush. Instantaneous biological metacrisis. I grew out of you. Still, could be worse."

"Oi, watch it, spaceman!"

"Oi, watch it, Earth girl. Ooo. I sound like you. I sound all, all sort of rough."

"Oi!"

"Oi!"

"Oi!"

"Spanners. Shush!"

Feeling slightly like she'd been trying to follow a tennis match, Eris finally lost her cool. "Oh my God, both of you, cut it out! We aren't out of the shit yet, and I am not adding you two bickering like three year olds to my list of priorities, ok?" When the two of them nodded, looking very much like naughty school kids, she pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Right. Doctor. Explain yourself."

He nodded. "I must have picked up a bit of Donna's voice, that's all. Is it? Did I? No. Oh, you are kidding me. No way. One heart. I've only got one heart. This body has got only one heart!"

Donna pulled a face. "What, like you're human?"

"Oh, that's disgusting!"

"Oi!"

"Oi!"

"Stop it!"

"No, wait." He patted himself down like he was looking for a set of lost keys. "I'm part Time Lord, part human. Well, isn't that wizard?"

"I kept hearing that noise, that heartbeat."

"Oh, that was me. My single heart. Because I'm a complicated event in time and space. Must have rippled back, converging on you."

"But why me?"

"Because you're special."

"Oh, I keep telling you, I'm not." She resolutely ignored the glare Eris was aiming at her as the New Doctor kept talking.

"No, but you are. Oh. You really don't believe that, do you? I can see, Donna, what you're thinking. All that attitude, all that lip, because all this time you think you're not worth it."

"Stop it."

"Shouting at the world because no one's listening. Well, why should they?"

"Doctor, stop it."

Eris shook her head. "Okay, this conversation is going in circles. We've got to try and figure out what's going on here."

But he brushed her off, running his hands over the nearest panel as he spoke his thoughts aloud. "No, it's more than that. It's like we were always heading for this. You came to the Tardis. And you found me again. Your granddad. Your car. Donna, your car. You parked your car right where the Tardis was going to land. That's not a coincidence at all! We've been blind. Something's been drawing us together for such a long time."

Donna frowned. "But you're talking like… destiny. There's no such thing. Is there?"

"It's still not finished. It's like the pattern's not complete. The strands are still drawing together. But heading for what?"

After sloshing through the wet undergrowth for ten or fifteen minutes, Martha found herself where she needed to be - outside an old stately home on the outskirts of the town. None of the lights were on in the windows, but a middle aged woman with grey hair was waiting for her outside.

"Hier ist niemand. Was immer Sie wollen, gehen Sie fort. Lassen Sie mich in Ruhe!" (There's no one here. Whatever you want, go away. Leave me alone!)

She had been expecting that sort of welcome. "Ich heisse Martha Jones. Ich komme von UNIT. Agentin fuenf sechs sechs sieben eins, von der medizinishen Abteilung." (My name is Martha Jones. I'm from UNIT. Agent 56671, from the medical division.)

"Es hiess Sie kaemen vorbei." (They said you were coming) "That accent. That is London, ja? I went to London. Long time ago."

"I thought this place was supposed to be guarded."

The woman sighed. "They were soldiers. Boys. I brought them food every day. But when der Albtraum came from the sky, they went home to die. But not you."

"I've got a job to do." Having committed the layout of the smaller UNIT facility to memory as instructed in her training, Martha led the way through the building as she went in search of her target. The woman followed, chatting away with a slight note of delirium in her voice.

"London. In those days, to see it. So much glamour. I was so young. I heard the soldiers talking many times. They would speak of the Osterhagen Key. I think London must be changed now, yes? But still, the glamour."

After entering the code and scanning her handprint, Martha looked back - straight down the barrel of a gun.

"You will not go."

"I've got no choice."

"I know the Key. What it does. Sie sind der Albtraum, nicht die anderen, Sie! Ich sollte Sie umbringen, am besten gleich jetzt!" (You're the nightmare, not the others, you! I should kill you, preferably right now!")

She shrugged. "Then do it." The woman's hand was shaking, the gun unsteady, and after a few moments she lowered it. Swinging the discreet door open, she stepped into the lift, facing the woman as she hit the only button on the panel.

"Martha, Zur Hoelle mit Dir!" ("Martha, to hell with you!")

"I know." She only let her face fall once the door had closed, allowing herself to express her upset and frustration for the few moments that the lift was in motion. Once the door opened again, she was calm. The little room she had been heading to was little more than a cupboard, but it was full of the high tech computers needed to carry out her dreadful task. Tuning the radio connection, she took a deep breath before making her first broadcast.

"This is Osterhagen Station One. My name is Martha Jones. Is there anyone there? Over."

The team of Daleks in charge of waste disposal dumped Jack unceremoniously on top of a pile of other rubbish in a large tub before activating the system that would slide the container into a concealed drawer. "Commence disposal. Incinerate!" The door clanged shut heavily as the container disappeared from view. "Disposal completed." And they slid away, ready to deal with the next heap of scrap metal - none of them noticing the soot smeared man prise his way through the door, coughing and spluttering.

One corridor away, a huddle of about fifty people who had been extracted from the street were being escorted closely by the Daleks that had brought them in. One at the front approached another at the end of the corridor, speaking only briefly. "Prisoners now on board the Crucible. They will be taken for testing."

Possibly the calmest of the three of them, Sarah Jane smiled encouragingly at Mickey and Jackie. "One step closer to the Doctor."

The Doctor in question was, at that precise moment, being led towards a spot on the floor of a chamber that they had all heard one of the Daleks refer to as the Vault. He and Rose were separated, made to stand about eight feet apart as Davros slid towards them.

"Activate the holding cells." Brilliant white spotlights shone down from above, and they were trapped in their individual light fields. "Excellent. Even when powerless, a Time Lord is best contained."

Voice flat, the Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Still scared of me, then?"

"It is time we talked, Doctor. After so very long."

A note of rage crept in. "No, no, no, no, no. We're not doing the nostalgia tour. I want to know what's happening right here, right now, because the Supreme Dalek said Vault, yeah? As in dungeon, cellar, prison. You're not in charge of the Daleks, are you? They've got you locked away down here in the basement like, what, a servant? Slave? Court jester?"

"We have… an arrangement."

"No, no, no, no, no. No, I've got the word. You're the Dalek's pet!"

"So very full of fire, is he not." His artificial blue eye landed on Rose. "And to think you crossed entire universes, striding parallel to parallel to find him again."

"Leave her alone."

"She is mine to do as I please."

Rose folded her arms. "Then why am I still alive?"

"You must be here. It was foretold. Even the Supreme Dalek would not dare to contradict the prophecies of Dalek Caan."

Another light came on, and Caan was illuminated once again. He looked to be in a very sorry state, and for a fraction of a second both prisoners felt just the tiniest bit sorry for him, held within his chains. And then he started to speak.

"So cold and dark. Fire is coming. The endless flames."

She wrinkled her nose. "What is that thing?"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "You've met before. Don't you remember? Although, he did look a bit different then. The last of the Cult of Skaro. But it flew into the Time War, unprotected."

Davros sounded proud. "Caan did more than that. He saw time. Its infinite complexity and majesty, raging through his mind. And he saw you. Both of you."

Caan cackled. "This I have foreseen, in the wild and the wind. The Doctor will be here as witness, at the end of everything. The Doctor and his precious Children of Time. And one of them will die!"

A wave of rage washed over him like acid. "Was it you, Caan? Did you kill Donna? Why did the Tardis door close? Tell me! My daughter is burning, will keep burning, over and over again, because her body will not allow her to die! She is being tortured in the heart of this place and she has done nothing to you!"

As the first tear fell down his face, Davros laughed coldly. "Oh, that's it. The anger, the fire, the rage of a Time Lord who butchered millions. There he is. Why so shy? Show your companion. Show her your true self. Dalek Caan has promised me that too."

"I have seen. At the time of ending, the Doctor's soul will be revealed."

He wiped the tear away. "What does that mean?"

Pressing a button on his panel of controls, Davros turned on the large holographic screen up above. "We will discover it together. Our final journey. Because the ending approaches. The testing begins."

"Testing? Testing of what?"

"The Reality bomb."

The humans had been taken to an enclosed space with a high ceiling and directed to a spot where the floor panels were a slightly different colour. "Prisoners will stand in the designated area. Move! Move!" A woman on the edge of the group tripped and fell, landing heavily on her knees and hunching over on the floor. The nearest Dalek brandished its sucker menacingly.

"You will stand!"

"I can't!"

"You will stand!"

"I can't. Please!"

"On your feet. On your feet!"

As their captors turned their attention on the woman, Sarah Jane took her chance and ran for it - on the way in, she'd spotted a door to what was probably a small service cupboard, and it seemed like a better place to be than where they currently were. There wasn't a door handle (naturally, as Dalek's don't have hands) so she slipped the sonic lipstick from her pocket and aimed it at the door. It slid open without a fuss, and she stepped inside, whispering as loudly as she dared to get the others' attention.

"Mickey! Jackie!"

Mickey ran to join her, but Jackie was helping the poor woman who'd fallen off the ground, and was just far too close to the Daleks to try making a run for it. So she focused on getting the other woman steady on her feet as the patrol moved on, satisfied with her attempt to get up.

"Prisoners will stand in the designated area."

The bulkhead door slid closed, and Mickey headbutted the glass viewing window with a groan.

"We can't just leave her!"

Outside, the woman who'd fallen was standing unsupported now, and she leant slightly to whisper in Jackie's ear. "What does it mean? What are they testing? What are they going to do?"

Jackie shrugged, glancing upward to the only obvious thing in the room. "I reckon it's that thing there."

High above, a giant circular structure was set into the ceiling. It reminded Jackie of an eye slightly, and that wasn't making her feel any better about things. It glowed with a sickeningly green light, and just looking at it made her feel dizzy.

Down in the Vault, they listened as the Supreme Dalek gave the orders. "Testing calibration of Reality bomb. Firing in ten rels. Nine, eight, seven-"

Sitting smugly in his little chair, Davros gazed up at the screen. "Behold. The apotheosis of my genius."

"-four, three, two, one, zero. Activate planetary alignment field."

The screen split to show a view of the planets around the Crucible as their atmospheres sprung to life with fire. The Doctor's jaw dropped in horror. "That's Z-neutrino energy, flattened by the alignment of the planets into a single string. No, Davros. Davros, you can't! You can't! No!"

In the storage area, a faint beeping cut through the silence - and Mickey realised that there was a way to get Jackie out after all. "Thirty minutes. It's recharged!" Pressing up against the little window again, he held up the big yellow button, just hoping that she would look their way and realise what he'd noticed. She caught his eye, looked down at her own button, and saw. Her way out. Guilt filling her veins like ice, she turned to the other woman and patted her hand. "I'm so sorry." Then, pressing down, she vanished and reappeared in the cupboard, next to Mickey. He hugged her the second her feet hit the ground, but she pulled away to look through the window. The machine up above had been switched on.

Before their eyes, the group of prisoners started to disintegrate. They just seemed to be erased, disappearing from the head downwards until there was nothing left but little heaps of dust on the floor. As the last fragments vanished, a distant Dalek voice echoed through the now empty chamber.

"Test completed."

Inside the Tardis, they had managed to tap into the image of the planets being streamed into the Vault so they could watch what was happening - mostly due to the Tardis' ability to follow where the Doctor was, the Copy Doctor's technical abilities, and some very colourful swearing from Eris as she held the right wires together to boost the connection. Watching the display, the Copy Doctor had managed to work out the exact same thing that the original had.

"It's the planets. The twenty seven planets. Single string Z-neutrinos compressed. No way. No, no, no."

Donna didn't understand - not being able to see the results of the strange colour changes around the planets made it hard to comprehend what else might have happened. "What was it? Doctor, what did it do?"

In the Vault, Rose had exactly the same question. "Doctor, what happened?"

But it was Davros who gave her an answer - the Doctor was still too horrified to speak. "Electrical energy, Miss Tyler. Every atom in existence is bound by an electrical field. The Reality bomb cancels it out. Structure falls apart. That test was focused on the prisoners alone. Full transmission will dissolve every form of matter."

"The stars are going out…"

He managed to overcome the mental block. "The twenty seven planets. They become one vast transmitter, blasting that wavelength."

Davros just got more and more animated as he spoke, waving his mechanically gloved hand in the air as he got louder and louder. "Across the entire universe. Never stopping, never faltering, never fading. People and planets and stars will become dust, and the dust will become atoms, and the atoms will become nothing. And the wavelength will continue, breaking through the Rift at the heart of the Medusa Cascade into every dimension, every parallel, every single corner of creation. This is my ultimate victory, Doctor! The destruction of reality itself!"

Above, in the heart of the Crucible, the Supreme Dalek gave the command.

"Prepare for universal detonation. The fleet will gather at the Crucible. All Daleks will return to shelter from the cataclysm. We will become the only life forms in existence."

Peering through the living room window, Sylvia let the net curtain drop back into place as she breathed a sigh of relief. "Look, they're leaving. Dad, they're going. The Daleks are going!"

Getting off the sofa to see what she was pointing at, Wilf shook his head. He didn't like this one bit, "Going where, though? And Donna's still out there. It's not over yet, sweetheart."

A series of clangs made the trio in the cupboard flinch and turn, ready to make an attempt to save their own lives - but it wasn't necessary. With slightly less grace than he would have liked, Jack pushed away the panel covering the end of the shaft and rolled into the room, rolling his eyes in mock irritation as he got to his feet.

"Just my luck. I climb through two miles of ventilation shafts, chasing life signs on this thing, and who do I find? Mickey Mouse!"

"You can talk, Captain Cheesecake."

Both boys laughed and launched at each other, hugging tight as Sarah Jane and Jackie glanced at each other, slightly bemused.

"Good to see you. And that's Beefcake."

"And that's enough hugging."

"We meet at last, Miss Smith."

Sarah Jane nodded politely, dipping a hand into her pocket. "There is something we can do. You've got to understand. I have a son down there on Earth. He's only fourteen years old. I've brought this." A gem on a chain that sparkled holographically, even in the low light. "It was given to me by a Verron Soothsayer. He said, this is for the End of Days."

"Is that a Warp Star?"

Mickey shook his head. "Going to tell me what a Warp Star is?"

"A warpfold conjugation trapped in a carbonised shell. It's an explosion, Mickey. An explosion waiting to happen."

In the little room, the screen sparking to life again almost made Martha jump out of her skin. The same had happened probably fifteen minutes earlier, but beyond a quick check to see that the communication link was open, they hadn't said a word to each other. This time, the soldier on the other end - a girl who looked about her age - sounded nervous.

"This is Osterhagen Station Five. Are you receiving, Station One?"

"I've got you. That makes three of us, and three is all we need."

"My name is Anna Zhou, what's yours?" A tag at the bottom of the screen read 'People's Republic of China', like the tag under Martha's face that read 'Germany'.

"Martha Jones. What about you, Station Four? You never said."

The man with 'Liberia' on his location tag shook his head. "I don't want my name on this, given what we're about to do."

Anna bit her lip. "So what happens now? Do we do it?"

"No. Not yet."

"UNIT instructions say, once three Osterhagen Stations are online-"

Martha was firm, having known from the start that she would be deviating from the instructions. "Yeah, but I've got a higher authority, way above UNIT. And there's one more thing the Doctor would do."

The floor of the control room was so covered with detritus that Donna was having to be extra careful about where she walked. Eris sat with an unassuming heap of metal in her lap, twisting various connections together to strengthen the structure while the Copy Doctor souped up the software. The gizmo was very nearly finished, but Donna still couldn't work out what it was meant to be for.

"So what is this thing?"

He grinned. "It's our only hope. A Z-neutrino biological inversion catalyser."

"Yeah. Earth girl, remember?"

"Davros said he built those Daleks out of himself. His genetic code runs through the entire race. If I can use this to lock the Crucible's transmission onto Davros himself-"

"It destroys the Daleks?"

Eris nodded, tightening a screw. "Biggest backfire in history."

"Incoming transmission. Origin Planet Earth."

The Supreme Dalek turned its eye towards the soldier that had raised the alarm. "Display!"

On the screen above, a face appeared. "This is Martha Jones, representing the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, on behalf of the human race."

"Send transmission to the Vault. Continue to monitor."

Not knowing that connection had been established, Martha continued. "This message is for the Dalek Crucible. Repeat. Can you hear me?"

Down in the Vault, the Doctor felt his spirits soar. "Put me through!"

Davros and Dalek Caan both sounded gleeful, although there was significantly more insanity in the latter's tone.

"It begins, as Dalek Caan foretold."

"The Children of Time will gather, and one of them will die."

"Stop saying that. Put me through!"

Davros relented and opened the connection, allowing Martha to see into the Vault. She gasped, relieved to see him but immediately noticing the trouble he was in. "Doctor! I'm sorry, I had to-"

Davros cut her off. "Oh, but the Doctor is powerless. My prisoner. State your intent."

"I've got the Osterhagen Key. Leave this planet and its people alone. Or I'll use it."

The Doctor wrinkled his nose as she held up the little black chip. "Osterhagen what? What's an Osterhagen Key?"

"There's a chain of twenty five nuclear warheads placed in strategic points beneath the Earth's crust. If I use the key, they detonate and the Earth gets ripped apart."

"What?! Who invented that? Well, someone called Osterhagen, I suppose. Martha, are you insane?"

"The Osterhagen Key is to be used if the suffering of the human race is so great, so without hope, that this becomes the final option."

"That's never an option."

Martha glared at him through the screen. "Don't argue with me, Doctor! Because it's more than that. Now, I reckon the Daleks need these twenty seven planets for something. But what if it becomes twenty six? What happens then? Daleks? Would you risk it?"

Grinning up at the screen, Rose didn't notice how displeased the Doctor really looked. "Oh, she's good."

"Who's that?"

"My name's Rose. Rose Tyler."

Martha couldn't stop her jaw from dropping. "Oh, my God. He found you!"

The screen split in half as another transmission came through - this time, it was Jack and the others, broadcasting from their little storage cupboard.

"Captain Jack Harkness, calling all Dalek boys and girls. Are you receiving me? Don't send in your goons, or I'll set this thing off." He held up the Warp Star on it's chain, a bundle of wires dangling off it. Rose couldn't believe her eyes - not only was she looking at a dead man who was very much upright, standing just behind him was an even more familiar face.

"He's still alive. Oh, my god. That- that's my mum!"

The Doctor was equally baffled by what he was seeing, although for a slightly different reason.

"And Mickey. Captain, what are you doing?"

"I've got a Warp Star wired into the mainframe. I break this shell, the entire Crucible goes up!"

"You can't! Where did you get a Warp Star?"

Sarah Jane stepped into frame. "From me. We had no choice. We saw what happened to the prisoners."

For the first time, Davros looked unsettled. "Impossible. That face… After all these years."

"Davros. It's been quite a while. Sarah Jane Smith. Remember me?"

"Oh, this is meant to be. The circle of Time is closing. You were there, on Skaro, at the very beginning of my creation."

"Yes. And I've learnt how to fight since then. You let the Doctor go, or this Warp Star, it gets opened."

Jack wiggled the chain menacingly. "I'll do it. Don't imagine I wouldn't."

Illuminated by her prison of light, Rose bounced on the balls of her feet - she was loving this!

"Now that's what I call a ransom! Doctor?"

But the Doctor stood with his head down, eyes fixed on the floor.

A smug smile on his wrinkled face, Davros' face shifted - if he'd had an eyebrow, it would have been raised. "And the prophecy unfolds."

Dalek Caan agreed. "The Doctor's soul is revealed. See him. See the heart of him."

"The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun. But this is the truth, Doctor. You take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons. Behold your Children of Time, transformed into murderers. I made the Daleks, Doctor. You made this."

He shook his head. "They're just trying to help."

"Already I have seen them sacrifice today, for their beloved Doctor. The Earth woman who fell opening the Subwave Network."

"Who was that?"

Rose felt her heart sink - she'd almost forgotten. How could she have forgotten? It had barely happened an hour ago! "Harriet Jones. She gave her life to get you here."

Davros crowed. "How many more? Just think. How many have died in your name? The Doctor. The man who keeps running, never looking back because he dare not, out of shame. This is my final victory, Doctor. I have shown you yourself."

The Supreme Dalek was getting tired of the back and forth. It wanted everyone where it could control them. "Enough. Engage defence zero five. Transmat engaged."

A familiar whine filled Martha's ears and she groaned, realising too late what was happening - because now there was nothing she could do about it. The Osterhagen Key dropped to the desk with a clatter as the transmat snatched her out of the room. In the same moment, the group clustered around the Warp Star were taken too, and the little necklace fell to the floor with a gentle tinkle. The five humans popped back into existence in the middle of the Vault, Jack catching Martha as she stumbled.

"I've got you. It's all right."

The Doctor jumped forward to help, momentarily forgetting he was trapped and bouncing off the forcefield. "Don't move, all of you. Stay still!"

Davros summoned the handful of Daleks that were allocated to the Vault. "Guard them! On your knees, all of you. Surrender!"

"Do as he says."

Rose shook her head, despairing. "Mum, I told you not to!"

"Yeah, but I couldn't leave you!"

Davros sneered. "The final prophecy is in place. The Doctor and his children, all gathered as witnesses."

"Except they're not." The others turned, still not having noticed what Martha had realised the moment she'd arrived. "Eris and Donna. Where are they?"

The Doctor could barely bring himself to meet her eyes. "Gone. They took the Tardis and destroyed it, with them inside."

Waving his hand, Davros cut him off. "They are irrelevant! Supreme Dalek, the time has come. Now, detonate the Reality bomb!"

The prisoners listened as the Supreme Dalek gave the order for real. "Activate planetary alignment field. "Universal Reality detonation in two hundred rels."

"You can't, Davros! Just listen to me! Just stop!"

But the madman just laughed maniacally. "Nothing can stop the detonation! Nothing and no one!"

And then -

A wheeze. An ancient, aching sound that everyone in the room knew better than the sound of their own heart beating. It grew louder and louder, and at the far end of the Vault, the outline of the Tardis began to appear, growing clearer and clearer with every breath from the engines.

"But that's-"

Davros finished the Doctor's thought. "Impossible."

The Tardis had landed. And as if things couldn't get any more impossible, the doors swung open, and the Doctor stepped out.

Jack grinned. "Brilliant!"

As the Copy Doctor ran towards them, holding a gadget the size of his head in his arms, the Doctor in the holding cell tried to stop him. "Don't!"

Davros fired, and the Copy dropped to the floor, the device scattering a few feet away as he curled in pain.

"Activate holding cell."

Donna ran from the Tardis and went straight for the device, drawing everyone's eyes with her - giving Eris the chance to slip out of the ship unnoticed and dart to the controls nearby.

"Doctor! I've got it. But I don't know what to do!"

Davros turned his weapon on Donna, sending her flying backwards across the floor until she thudded against the control bank. The Doctor slammed his hand against the edge of the force field, only slightly reassured by the sight of his daughter's hand reaching around the edge of the unit. "Donna! Donna! Are you all right, Donna?"

"Destroy the weapon!" On Davros' orders, one of the Daleks fired on the little gizmo, reducing it to scrap in a shower of sparks. "I was wrong about your warriors, Doctor. They are pathetic."

Still not entirely sure whether to believe her eyes or not, Rose looked between the two holding cells. "How comes there are two of you?"

The Doctor waved her off. "Human biological metacrisis. Never mind that. Now we've got no way of stopping the Reality Bomb."

From above, the Supreme Dalek reminded them just how close they were to disaster.

"Detonation in twenty rels. Nineteen–"

Davros gestured towards the ceiling. "Stand witness, Time Lord. Stand witness, humans. Your strategies have failed, your weapons are useless, and– oh. The end of the universe has come."

"Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one."

But for a few moments, there was nothing. They had been expecting a tremor in the station, visual feedback, lights and computer chirrups. Just… nothing. Until an alarm started to sound. Popping up from behind the data bank, Donna wiggled her fingers over the panel of buttons like she was trying to decide what to press first.

"Mmm, closing all Z-neutrino relay loops using an internalised synchronous back-feed reversal loop."

Jumping to sit on the edge of the computer, Eris knocked Donna's hand towards one in particular. "That button there."

Donna pressed it, and all hell broke loose. Several further alarms started to ring, and the sound of Daleks discovering a multitude of problems could be heard through the entire Crucible.

"System in shutdown!"

"Detonation negative!"

"Explain. Explain. Explain!"

The Doctor felt his jaw drop. "Donna, you can't even change a plug."

"Do you want to bet, Time Boy?"

Enraged, Davros hissed. "You'll suffer for this- argh!" He cried out in pain as Donna flipped a lever, sending his intended shot backwards to travel through him instead.

"Oh, bio-electric dampening field with a retrograde field arc inversion!"

"Exterminate her!"

A trio of Daleks closed in. "Exterminate. Exterminate. Exterminate."

Looking rather bored, Eris hit a few more buttons. The result was immediate.

"Weapons non-functional!"

Next to her, Donna looked impressed. "Macrotransmission of a K-filter wavelength blocking Dalek weaponry in a self-replicating energy blindfold matrix. Very nice work."

Still dumbfounded, the Doctor asked, "How did you work that out? You're-"

But even as he came to the answer himself, the Copy Doctor picked himself up off the floor.

"-Time Lord. Part Time Lord."

"Part human!" Donna grinned. "Oh, yes. That was a two-way biological metacrisis. Half Doctor, half Donna."

The Doctor kicked himself mentally for not making the connection himself. "The Doctor Donna. Just like the Ood said, remember? They saw it coming. The Doctor Donna!"

"Holding cells deactivated. And seal the Vault. Well, don't just stand there, you skinny boys in suits. Get to work!"

Now that the others were free, and the Daleks were outnumbered, a hint of panic had crept into Davros' voice. "Stop them! Get them away from the controls."

"And spin!" Donna twisted a dial clockwise, then anticlockwise. "And the other way."

As the Daleks twirled uncontrollably, shouting that they needed assistance and had lost control over their movements, the Doctors reached the control panel. The Copy Doctor looked at the dials she'd been manipulating. "What did you do?"

"Trip switch circuit-breaker in the psychokinetic threshold manipulator."

"But that's brilliant!"

The Doctor laughed. "Why did we never think of that?"

"Because you two were just Time Lords, you dumbos, lacking that little bit of human. That gut instinct that comes hand in hand with Planet Earth. I can think of ideas you two couldn't dream of in a million years. Ah, the universe has been waiting for me. Now, let's send that trip switch all over the ship. Did I ever tell you, best temp in Chiswick? Hundred words per minute!"

And as she started to type, the Doctors got to work around her.

"System malfunction."

"Motor casing interference."

"What is happening? Explain!"

As confusion spread like a plague through the Crucible, Jack ran back into the Tardis for the equipment he'd left behind earlier. Patting Donna and her dad on the shoulder, Eris stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled to get the attention of the others.

"Right, you lot! We've got some tidying up to do, and we're going to need all hands on deck. If you aren't helping us with the technology, you need to keep the gang off our back. Okay? Lets get a move on!"

Donna clapped her hands together as everyone else split off to deal with the Daleks.

"Come on then, boys. We've got twenty seven planets to send home. Activate magnetron."

Jack came back outside, wielding the guns he'd packed earlier, and tossed one to Mickey. Davros wheeled closer, hissing in annoyance. "You will desist!"

But now that he was armed, Mickey was significantly less afraid than he had been. "Just stay where you are, mister."

As Sarah Jane, Rose, Jack and Martha manhandled the nearby Daleks, sending them spinning down corridors and slamming into walls, the quartet at the controls got to work on reversing the movement of the planets.

"Off you go, Clom."

"Back home, Adipose Three."

"Shallacatop, done. And… that's Pyrovilia, sorted!"

"Can't forget the Lost Moon of Poosh - off you go!"

As the room was cleared of threats, the others came back to huddle around the controls, still completely baffled by how the situation had progressed. Rose looked between the two Doctors, still not certain that her eyes weren't playing a trick on her.

"Is anyone going to tell us what the hell is going on?"

Donna shrugged. "He poured all his regeneration energy into his spare hand. I touched the hand, and he grew out of that but that fed back into me. But, it just stayed dormant in my head till the synapses got that little extra spark, kicking them into life. Thank you, Davros! Part human, part Time Lord. And I got the best bit of the Doctor. I got his mind."

Tapping away at the buttons, Eris hummed. "Yeah that's pretty much it. It wasn't extended contact, but a fraction of a second was all the hand needed. One little energetic kick and boom! There he was."

Sarah Jane laughed. "So there's three of you?"

"Yep. Three Doctors."

Jack scrunched his forehead and looked away. "I can't tell you what I'm thinking right now."

As Eris mock gagged, the Doctor grinned at Donna. "You're so unique the timelines were converging on you. Human being with a Time Lord brain."

At a distance from the group now, Davros frowned. "But you promised me, Dalek Caan. Why did you not foresee this?"

"Oh, I think he did. Something's been manipulating the timelines for ages, getting Donna Noble to the right place at the right time."

Dalek Caan's tentacles twitched with more vigour than before. "This would always have happened. I only helped, Doctor."

Davros was enraged. "You betrayed the Daleks!"

"I saw the Daleks. What we have done, throughout time and space, I saw the truth of us, Creator, and I decreed, no more!"

Having heard all of this, the Supreme Dalek had had enough. "I will descend to the Vault!"

As its platform descended through the ceiling, Jack aimed his gun upwards. "Heads up!"

"Davros, you have betrayed us."

"It was Dalek Caan-"

"The Vault will be purged. You will all be exterminated!" It fired on the control panel, and it blew up with a cloud of sparks that forced all of them to back off. But the Supreme Dalek's hold over the room didn't last long - Jack charged the gun and pumped the trigger.

"Like I was saying, feel this!" And it exploded into thick chunks.

As the least likely to suffer any real damage, Eris was the first to go back to the controls, ducking between the panels to check the inner workings before resurfacing with a grim expression. "We've got a problem. Magnetron's down, and there's no saving it, given the state it's in. And there's one planet left to move."
The Doctor joined her to check the readout and rolled his eyes. "Oh, and guess which one it is. But! We can use the Tardis!"

As he and Eris darted inside, the Copy Doctor took his place at the controls. "Holding Earth stability. Maintaining atmospheric shell."

Dalek Caan was still chattering away in his little prison cell. "The prophecy must complete. I have seen the end of everything Dalek, and you must make it happen, Doctor."

"He's right. Because with or without a Reality bomb, this Dalek Empire's big enough to slaughter the cosmos. They've got to be stopped."

Donna knew her discomfort was showing on her face. "Just, just wait for the Doctor."

"I am the Doctor! Maximising Dalekanium power feeds. Blasting them back!"

All over the Crucible - indeed, all across the Medusa Cascade - the Daleks began to explode. The Doctor ran back out to the Vault, furious.

"What have you done?"

"Fulfilling the prophecy."

"Do you know what you've done? Now get in the Tardis! Everyone! All of you, inside! Run! In! In! In! In!"

"Sarah Jane! Rose! Jackie! Jack! Mickey! In you get!"

As the Copy Doctor made sure everyone was safely inside, the Doctor stuck his hand through the doorway.

"Davros? Come with me. I promise I can save you."

The mad scientist howled from behind a wall of fire. "Never forget, Doctor, you did this. I name you. Forever, you are the Destroyer of the Worlds!"

Still Dalek Caan cackled. "One will still die."

He decided he'd heard enough, and ducked back inside with the others.

Taking his place at the console next to his daughter, the Doctor set the controls to dematerialise - just as the Crucible exploded. Somehow, the ship managed to avoid the worst of the tremors, and they were safely out of harms way. But they still had a job to do. Sarah Jane swung the scanner around to face them.

"Doctor, what about the Earth? It's stuck in the wrong part of space!"

"I'm on it. Torchwood Hub, this is the Doctor. Are you receiving me?"

Time Lock broken by the exploding Dalek, Gwen and Ianto had felt safe enough to come away from the door and check the computers. "Loud and clear. Is Jack there?"

"Can't get rid of him. Jack, what's her name?"

"Gwen Cooper."

"Tell me, Gwen Cooper, are you from an old Cardiff family?" He beckoned Rose over, and she knew why the moment she set eyes on the screen. It was exactly the same girl!

Gwen frowned slightly, not sure why she was being asked. "Yes, all the way back to the eighteen hundreds…"

"Ah, thought so. Spatial genetic multiplicity."

Rose nodded. "Oh, yeah."

"Yeah, it's a funny old world. Now, Torchwood, I want you to open up that Rift Manipulator. Send all the power to me."

Ianto nodded. "Doing it now, sir."

Gwen checked the readings. "What's that for?"

The Doctor was already working on a different connection. "It's a tow rope. Now then. Sarah, what was your son's name?"

She rushed back around to the screen, desperate to see her boy. "Luke. He's called Luke. And the computer's called Mister Smith!"

"Calling Luke and Mister Smith. This is the Doctor. Come on, Luke. Shake a leg."

Having been sat on the attic floor since she'd gone out, not entirely sure what to do with himself, Luke scrambled to his feet and approached the screen. "Is Mum there?"

"Oh, she's fine and dandy." Indeed, there were tears in her eyes as she waved at him, overjoyed. "Now, Mister Smith, I want you to harness the Rift power and loop it around the Tardis. You got that?"

Mister Smith whirred for a moment before replying. "I regret, I will need remote access to Tardis base code numerals."

"Oh, blimey, that's going to take a while."

Sarah Jane nudged him aside. "No, no, no. Let me. K9, out you come!"

And the little robot dog beamed in beside Luke to the sound of cheers from the Tardis - Eris had practically tripped over her own feet in her hurry to see him on the screen.

"Affirmative, Mistress."

"Oh, good dog K9!"

"K9, give Mister Smith the base code."

"Master. Tardis base code now being transferred. The process is simple."

Once that was underway, the Doctor turned his attention back to the Tardis controls. The Copy and his daughter were already back in position, but he still needed some extra pairs of hands to help out. "Now then, you lot. Sarah, hold that down. Mickey, you hold that. Because you know why this Tardis always is always rattling about the place? Rose? That, there. It's designed to have six pilots, and I have to do it single handed." As Eris coughed, eyes narrowed, he amended that statement. "Okay, not entirely. But one pilot plus one learner isn't exactly ideal. Martha, keep that level. But not any more. Jack, there you go. Steady that. Now we can fly this thing." He reached Jackie, who looked eager to help, and just put a hand on her shoulder and gently guided her towards the jump seats. "No, Jackie. No, no. Not you. Don't touch anything. Just stand back. Like it's meant to be flown. We've got the Torchwood Rift looped around the Tardis by Mister Smith, and we're going to fly Planet Earth back home. Right then. Off we go!"

The movement felt stilted at first, as the Tardis took the strain of the invisible tow rope of power and started to pull the Earth out of the Medusa Cascade. But the jolting wasn't anywhere near as bad as expected, given that for once the ship was being piloted with the appropriate amount of people in control. Things were much bumpier on the planet below, but that was to be expected - they were being dragged across a significant part of the universe for the second time in twelve hours, after all. Donna paced in a circle around the console, supervising everyone who'd been given a job to do; nobody had been asked to do anything complex, but it still needed monitoring. The slightest of slips of the hand could spell disaster.

"That's really good, Jack. I think you're the best."

Of course, she couldn't resist a little bit of flirting while she worked, even as the Doctor shook his head at her. It took surprisingly little time, with everyone pulling their weight, to get back to where they were supposed to be. The Earth was safely back in its orbit. They had done it.

Once the flight was stable and they were able to confirm that things had succeeded, the celebration could begin. The Tardis was full of joy as her temporary pilots hugged and cheered, revelling in their success as the scanner picked up the news broadcasts from the planet below.

Eris got them back on the ground while the others were still congratulating each other - they had places to get to, people to see. Family they wanted to hug. She did too, but she didn't exactly have to go far to find hers. Church bells rang as she and the Doctor headed into the street with Sarah Jane; it was a beautiful sunny day again, and a horde of children were giggling in the park down the road. Sarah Jane shot the two of them a look.

"You know, you act like such a lonely man. And you're just as bad, missy! But look at you two. You've got the biggest family on Earth." She hugged them as tight as she could, desperately wishing she could take them home with her but knowing it wouldn't ever happen. "Oh! I've got to go. He's only fourteen. It's a very long story. And thank you!"

They watched her set off as Jack stepped outside, his mood immediately soured as the Doctor grabbed at his vortex manipulator, ignoring his protesting.

"I told you, no teleport! And, Martha, get rid of that Osterhagen thing, eh? Save the world one more time."

Patting the Tardis' side fondly, she nodded. She'd been planning on stopping by Torchwood to see how everyone was doing before heading back to work, so she would have to add a trip back to Germany to her to do list. "Consider it done."

They both saluted him, ignoring the eye roll he gave them, before heading down the street.

Bounding out of the Tardis, Mickey took them both by surprise. "Oi, where are you going?"

He shrugged. "Well, I'm not stupid. I can work out what happens next. And hey, I had a good time in that parallel world, but my gran passed away. Nice and peaceful. She spent her last years living in a mansion. There's nothing there for me now, certainly not Rose."

Eris frowned, knowing exactly what he meant by that and feeling rather bad for him.

"So, what will you do?"

"Anything. Brand new life. Just you watch. See you, boss. Hey, you two!" And he ran to catch up with Jack and Martha.

Everyone left in the Tardis had the same destination, more or less, and so when the doors swung shut behind him, the Doctor clapped his hands together.

"Just time for one last trip. Dårlig Ulv Stranden. Better known as…"

The journey took no time at all, given how much the gaps had widened, and doors opened onto a familiarly grey looking beach. As the Copy Doctor and Jackie went outside, she huffed and shoved her hands in her pockets.

"Oh, fat lot of good this is! Back of beyond. Bloody Norway?! Rose, I'm going to have to phone your father. He's on the nursery run. I was pregnant, do you remember? Had a baby boy."

"Oh, brilliant. What did you call him?"

"Doctor."

The Copy Doctor's eyes lit up. "Really?"

"No, you plum. He's called Tony."

The moment she had stepped outside, Rose had known exactly where they'd landed. And she was none too pleased about it. "Hold on, this is the parallel universe, right?"

The Doctor nodded. "You're back home."

Leaning against the side of the ship, Donna finished his sentence. "And the walls of the world are closing again, now that the Reality Bomb never happened. It's dimensional retroclosure. See, I really get that stuff now."

"No, but I spent all that time trying to find you. I'm not going back now."

The Doctor pointed at his doppleganger. "But you've got to. Because we saved the universe, but at a cost. And the cost is him. He destroyed the Daleks. He committed genocide. He's too dangerous to be left on his own."

The Copy scoffed. "You made me!"

"Exactly. You were born in battle, full of blood and anger and revenge. Remind you of someone? That's me, when we first met. And you made me better. Now you can do the same for him."

She shook her head. "But… he's not you.

"He needs you. That's very me."

Eris sighed, moving closer so she could take Rose's hand, needing her to understand.

"Listen, the walls are closing. It would be too dangerous to try and get Pete and Tony and take you all back to our universe. It's just too fragile. There's a very good chance we'd all end up stuck in the void forevermore. So we're giving you the next best thing." She glanced at the Copy. "Go on. Tell her."

"I look like him and I think like him. Same memories, same thoughts, same everything. Except I've only got one heart."

Rose blinked, confused. "Which means?"

"I'm part human. Specifically, the aging part. I'll grow old and never regenerate. I've only got one life, Rose Tyler. I could spend it with you, if you want."

"You'll grow old at the same time as me?"

"Together."

Behind them, the Tardis made a throaty groaning noise, and they all turned. The Doctor ran a hand through his hair. "Look, we've got to go. This reality is sealing itself off for ever."

Scuffing her shoe against the sand, Rose found that she was struggling to look the Copy in the eye. "But, it's still not right, because the Doctor's still you."

Moving, the Doctor stood so that he was on one side of her, and his Copy was on the other.

"And I'm him."

"All right. Both of you, answer me this. When I last stood on this beach, on the worst day of my life, what was the last thing you said to me? Go on, say it."

"I said, Rose Tyler."

"Yeah, and how was that sentence going to end?"

He faltered for a second. "Does it need saying?"

Instead she turned to the other one. "And you, Doctor? What was the end of that sentence?"

He leant in to whisper in her ear, those three little words she had wanted to hear for longer than she could describe. All she could do in response was kiss him, flinging her arms around his shoulders like she was terrified he'd disappear in front of her. After all, that was exactly what had happened last time.

Seeing that she was happy, he turned away and stepped into the Tardis, followed by Eris and Donna. The journey out of the parallel universe was much rockier than the journey in - they'd left just in time.

Wandering around the console, Donna felt like she was on top of the world. "I thought we could try the planet Felspoon. Just because. What a good name, Felspoon. Apparently, it's got mountains that sway in the breeze. Mountains that move. Can you imagine?"

From the other side, the Doctor tried to keep the sadness off his face. "And how do you know that?"

"Because it's in your head. And if it's in your head, it's in mine."

"And how does that feel?"

"Brilliant! Fantastic! Molto bene! Great big universe, packed into my brain. You know you could fix that chameleon circuit if you just tried hotbinding the fragment links and superseding the binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary, binary–" She stopped with a gasp, doubling over as a burning pain flared through her skull. And then, it was gone. "I'm fine! Nah, never mind Felspoon. You know who I'd like to meet? Charlie Chaplin. I bet he's great, Charlie Chaplin. Shall we do that? Shall we go and see Charlie Chaplin? Shall we? Charlie Chaplin? Charlie Chester. Charlie Brown. No, he's fiction. Friction, fiction, fixing, mixing, Rickston, Brixton–" It was worse this time, and she stumbled against the console, vaguely aware of Eris tucking herself under her other arm to help keep her up. "Oh, my God."

Unable to hide it now, the Doctor made his way slowly towards where they were standing. "You know what's happening, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"There's never been a human Time Lord metacrisis before now. And you know why."

"Because there can't be. But… I want to stay."

"Look at me. Donna, just look at me."

"I was going to be with you forever!"

"I know."

"The rest of my life, travelling in the Tardis. The Doctor Donna. No. Oh my god. I can't go back. Don't make me go back!"

"Donna, listen." Eris stroked her back soothingly, fighting a losing battle against her own tears. "When I took the hand from you, it meant you didn't quite get the full hit. Don't get me wrong, you took enough of it, but… we don't have to take everything."

Both the Doctor and Donna looked lost. "What?"

"I got the Tardis to start running probabilities, to make some calculations and work out just how much trouble you were in. I got to you just in time, any longer and we would have been forced to wipe absolutely everything. It will still be too dangerous for you to stay, though. I'm sorry. Being in the vortex again would reactivate everything, and it would kill you. You know that, don't you?"

"Yeah… so, what's going to happen?"

The Doctor didn't look convinced. "Eris, are you sure about this?"

She nodded. "A hundred percent. Because it's not just Donna who was affected by your regeneration energy. I got a hit too. Just the tiniest spark, enough to rewire some of the most creative bits of my brain. This will work. Think about it… it worked when it happened to Jamie."

"Oh… Jamie!"

Donna frowned for a moment, finding the memory that she shouldn't have had. "Jamie… who got sent away by the Time Lords. And… had his memory wiped. So he remembered meeting you, but none of the adventures he had."

Eris squeezed her hand. "It would protect you. Let you go home, safe. And you'd remember us, but… just as strange acquaintances you met on a strange Christmas Day. We can't leave anything else behind."

"But it's better than losing everything." Donna sniffled, took a deep breath, and looked the Doctor dead in the eyes. "Do it.

He was stunned by her bravery. "I'm sorry, Donna, I'm so sorry. We've had the very best times together."

"You'll have to remember them for me."

"I promise I will."

And with that, he pressed his fingers to either side of her forehead and went through her mind, tidying up every rogue trace of the two of them. The strain was too much for her to handle, and she passed out moments in, safe in her best friends' arms.

Knowing that she couldn't wake up in the Tardis, they landed in the street opposite her house, Eris running to knock on the door while the Doctor tried to drag Donna over. Wilf opened, the excitement on his face becoming fear when he saw the scene in front of him.

"Donna? Oh, Donna? What's happened?"

"Help us Wilf, please."

Sylvia came to meet them at the door, and together the four of them carried Donna up the stairs and got her settled in her own bed before heading back down to the living room. A thunderstorm began to open up overhead, the soft sound of the rain providing a backing track to the story the two time travellers told.

"She took my mind into her own head. But that's a Time Lord consciousness. All that knowledge, it was killing her."

Wilf still sounded worried, understandably. "But she'll get better now?"

"I had to wipe her mind. Not of everything, but of an awful lot. She'll only remember us now from the wedding. Everything after that is gone."

"Oh, all those wonderful things she did. Why did you have to take it away?"

"Because it just wasn't safe enough. If those memories had stayed, if the information associated with them hadn't been wiped, she would have died. Her mind would just have burnt out."

Eris bit her lip. "And you can't tell her, either. Excess detail about us will trigger everything to come back, and it will rip her mind apart. It's risky enough leaving her with what's still there as it is. We've… oh, I hate to use the word manipulated, but its all I've got. We've manipulated her emotional state so it's the same as it was on that day. When we asked if she wanted to come with, she said no. And she was happy with that. For as long as possible, Donna will stay happy with that decision. And she can go back to having a life, being the amazing woman that she is, and she will never know that things turned out differently."

Sylvia shook her head. "But the whole world's talking about it. We travelled across space!"

"It'll just be a story. One of those Donna Noble stories, where she missed it all again."

Wilf looked even sadder now. "But she was better with you!"

"Don't say that, Dad."

"No, she was!"

The Doctor cut in. "I just want you to know there are worlds out there, safe in the sky because of her. That there are people living in the light, and singing songs of Donna Noble, a thousand million light years away. They will never forget her, while she can never remember. And for one moment, one shining moment, she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe."

"She still is. She's my daughter."

Eris raised an eyebrow. "Then maybe you should tell her that once in a while."

The conversation was swiftly silenced by the sound of Donna storming down the stairs, stomping into the front room with an irritated look on her face. "I was asleep on my bed in my clothes, like a flipping kid! What do you let me do that for?" Then, she set eyes on the people on her sofa. "Oh, it's you two. How'd you end up here?"

The confusion in her voice made the two of them ache, but Eris managed to put a smile on her face. "Ah, just… your grandad bumped into us the other day. Invited us for a cup of tea, that's all."

Sylvia's eyes were steely as she looked at the two of them. "They're leaving soon."

Donna shrugged. "Alright, have fun. Don't end up in any trouble, and all that. Anyway, mum - my phone's gone mad. Thirty two texts. Veena's gone barmy. She's saying planets in the sky. What have I missed now?"

Cackling to herself, she went into the kitchen. Sylvia nodded.

"As I said, I think you should go."

They followed her to the kitchen, just to have a chance to say goodbye one last time. She was on the phone, chatting animatedly to one of her friends like she didn't have a care in the world.

"How thick do you think I am? Planets. Tell you what that was, dumbo. That's those two for one lagers you gets down the offy because you fancy that little man in there with the goatee. Yes, you do. I've seen you!"

The Doctor knocked gently on the door frame. "Donna? We were just going."

She glanced back. "Yeah, see you around. I tell you what though, you're wasting your time with that one, because Susie Mair, she went on that dating site, and she saw him. No, no, no, no. Listen, listen, this is important. Susie Mair wouldn't lie! Not unless it was about calories!"

Wilf walked the duo to the front door, quietly devastated by everything that had happened and perceiving quite clearly that they were feeling exactly the same. The rain was relentless now, and the Doctor shuddered slightly as the rain permeated the layers of his suit. "Ah. You'll have quite a bit of this. Atmospheric disturbance. Still, it'll pass. Everything does."

Eris swore under her breath, wishing she'd thought ahead enough to grab her jacket from the console room floor before leaving. "Bye bye Wilfred. Thank you."

He looked worried. "Oh, but… Doctor? Eris? What about you now? Who've you got? I mean, you've got each other, but… all those friends of yours?"

The Doctor shrugged. "They've all got someone else. Still, that's fine. I'm fine."

"I'll watch out for you, sir."

"You can't ever tell her the rest!"

"No, no, no. But every night, Doctor, when it gets dark, and the stars come out, I'll look up on her behalf. I'll look up at the sky, and think of you."

Touched, the two of them thanked him again, before turning and squelching their way back to the Tardis, knowing he was still watching over them even as they got inside and closed the doors.

Watching as it dematerialised, Wilf saluted that beautiful blue box. It was the least he could do after all they had done for his girl.

Inside the ship, everything was quiet. They didn't speak as they worked around the console, dancing in familiar steps to get the Tardis away from where they had started. Far, far away. They set her to drift for the moment, stepping back as they got settled into flight and slumping heavily against the jump seats. Eris was the one to break the silence.

"So… what do we do now?"

What do you think?!

See you in the next one, and happy reading

Love, Az xx