Author's note: I should make a very firm note that this story is not abandoned, but is currently on hiatus after this chapter. I'll be working on it, but the current plan is for this to have 14 chapters and I'd rather post at least three chapters at a time rather than post one every six months to a year. I'm planning a rewrite of the series through S7, including Clara as companion. Something to look forward to, if you've forgiven me for the wait on all of this. :P I'll post when I've got three chapters for you guys. Thanks for your patience if you're still here.

"Accept it," the Bad Wolf said. "Accept that things are changing, things will change. All things will end. There is nothing you can do."

"There is always something I can do!" the Doctor insisted. "Who are you to tell me what I'm capable of - "

She spoke serenely. "I know you. I know every piece of you, throughout time."

"Then you know nothing has stopped me before," he retorted.

"Your past isn't the problem," the Bad Wolf said, dismissive. "Your future... all of you, where you mean to go, where you will go… you don't understand. You can't possibly understand."

"Of course I can understand," the Doctor said fiercely. "Tell me. What do you want? Why are you here?"

"I'm here for you, Doctor," the Bad Wolf answered matter-of-factly. "She brought me here, to make things right."

He threw his hands up in frustrated confusion. "What - " he started.

She cut him off. "This is irrelevant. My Doctor… you say you can weave in between the threads of time, but like any mortal you weave your own shroud each time you do. Your story is going to end."

"Isn't that what you're meant to do? Save me?" The Doctor smiled nastily to punctuate it.

The Bad Wolf completely ignored that. "This is a warning," she said. "What you fear is coming. Your future is coming."

The Doctor's tone was bitter, but his face remained accepting. "It always is."

The Bad Wolf smiled, Rose's mouth lifting, as tears streaked hot down her cheeks. "You can't change what's going to happen."

"Watch me," the Doctor said shortly.

The Bad Wolf exhaled in a rush of golden energy, and Rose's body lolled for a moment; the Doctor caught her when she fell.

"I'm taking her to the sick bay. Running some tests. Donna, monitor the signals we isolated," he said, quietly, dangerously. "I'll be back soon."

"You need me there," Donna said mildly.

Now the Doctor was genuinely irritated. "Why does everyone think I need - "

"Because you need people sometimes," Amy interrupted, peevishly.

"Pond," the Doctor started in much the same tone, then just swept Rose up into his arms to carry her out of the console room without another word.

Rose was dying. The Doctor knew that, it was clear as the nose on Rory's face, and as much as he wished he could deny it, it was a reality crystallizing so pointedly in front of him that he couldn't. There was a chance he could be wrong, but investigating was a dangerous game. Once the tests confirmed to him that she was dying, what then? He would have to face that what little time he'd snatched away with her was bleeding away.

Would it be worth knowing she was fine if it meant the risk of welcoming the inevitable diagnosis instead?

He placed her on the bed in the sick bay, delicately, watching the equipment pick up her vital signs the moment her back touched the sheets and solid metal of the bed. The first flicker on the screens wasn't promising; just about every system in her body was depressed, as though she was drifting behind her life signs like a thin tow line connected her to life at all.

You can't change what's going to happen, the Bad Wolf had said.

That could mean anything. He pulled a chair up and watched the screens and Rose herself avidly, his mind racing. "I need you to tell me the truth," he said to Rose, softly. "I know what I did to you. I know I hurt you. I'm sorry. But if you want me to help you I need you to tell me the truth."

She didn't reply. Obviously. He took in each of the screens, all the information there, for any clue he might find. Artron energy began to bleed through her pores in a rush of gold, and her breathing arrested for just a moment; then, everything returned to normal. The Doctor stared.

It didn't make sense that Rose had survived this long as essentially an electromagnet of artron energy, but it didn't make sense that Rose brought the Bad Wolf back into existence. It didn't make sense that the Bad Wolf could do everything it had done. What's one more drop in the impossibility bucket? he supposed.

He toyed with the sonic, scanned her with it, and considered the readings.

"She'll be asleep for a while," Donna said from the doorway. "We should talk. The lot of us."

"You should call Shaun," the Doctor answered. "Give him an update, at least, if he can handle it. Never met the man, I don't know if he's got the constitution - "

"He's my husband, of course he's got the constitution," Donna returned without missing a beat.

"He married you when you were…" The Doctor gestured vaguely to indicate a relative 'before'. "You know, not when…" He gestured again, at her now.

"Are you saying I'm more difficult when I've got a Time Lord consciousness in my head?" Donna asked, with plain amusement. "Well, I must be, look at you - "

"I'm not difficult!" the Doctor argued.

Donna looked at him frankly, and he conceded the point with a sheepish shrug. "My point stands," he said, with a raised finger. "And I don't know if you want to put him in danger."

Donna stopped, surprised. "You'd let me… bring him?"

"Well, why not?" the Doctor asked rhetorically. "If he'd follow the rules."

"What rules?" Donna asked dryly.

"The ones no one follows," the Doctor said, cracking a half-smile.

He put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, thinking. She crossed the room to fondly ruffle his hair. "You should tell her the truth," she said.

"She's not telling me the truth," the Doctor said into his hands.

"Set a good example, then."

"I need to send her back."

"Did you hear her back there?" Donna needled him. "This is the situation we're in. We need as much help as we can get. I know where we're going next."

The Doctor sighed and lifted his head. "To pick up Shaun?"

"Yeah, that too," Donna said easily. "Come on, then. I have to tell the whole class."

The Doctor pulled himself up out of the seat, looked at Donna, then back at Rose. "I'll see you there," Donna said, in simple understanding, and left the sick bay.

He looked down at Rose, who looked so peaceful and safe, so normal, so human. He leaned down and kissed her forehead, his eyes closing tightly in an automatic rush of fear.

"Don't die," he whispered, uselessly, at her serene face and slightly parted lips. "Please don't die."

As the bedroom door shut behind them, Rose just looked at the Doctor, the space between them more fraught with tension than she could have ever imagined, then lowered her eyes contritely. He knew he should still be angry. For some reason, faced with her, after time to think and remember what he'd learned, he wasn't. Not as much.

"Sit," he ordered her shortly, and she stiffened, and went to sit, straight-backed, on the bed. He sat beside her, not too close, careful to not allow any contact as she turned just slightly toward him. He didn't want to soften, to make this easy on her. "Why did you lie to me?"

"I didn't know," Rose blurted out. "I didn't know that he was alive. He was gone. I - she couldn't feel him anymore, he was gone, Doctor - "

He cut her off with a gesture. "I don't mean about that."

Rose stilled. "Oh," she said, in a smaller voice.

"Right," he said tightly. "Let's start from the beginning."

She took a deep breath, her hands gathered in her lap, and began to speak. "You gave us the TARDIS coral." The Doctor nodded. "Donna said how to grow it, and John figured it out. But it wasn't growing fast enough. Something was happening, we weren't prepared, John said." She was obviously holding something back, but she was finally talking; he could get more information out of her later. "We needed to be prepared. We needed a TARDIS."

"I knew we shouldn't have," the Doctor muttered.

"No," Rose said fiercely. "It's not like that!"

"It's absolutely like that!" His hands flew up in indignation, and he raked his fingers into his hair to keep channeling out the nervous energy. "You were in a different world, Rose, you shouldn't have tried to call on - on what still - "

"There's still trace artron energy in me, that's what John said." She spoke rapidly, so he couldn't interrupt her, probably. "All I had to do was call it up. Like a memory. And I did, and it grew. And she came to me, in my dreams, all the time."

"You grew a TARDIS out of a coral and then accelerated it with energy from the wrong universe," the Doctor snapped off. "And the Bad Wolf - you could have died, Rose!" You already are dying. "It's irresponsible. Not of you, of him, he should have known better, he could have ripped through the fabric of the multiverse and killed you in the process, and you said this wasn't his fault - "

"It's not!" Rose argued. "And this doesn't have anything to do with anything!"

"The Bad Wolf lied to me, you lied to me, I can't save the universe or figure out who's at war with me unless I have all of the information," he railed at her. The softness he'd started with was fading quickly. "Why would you lie to me?"

She abruptly stood, distressed, pacing towards the corner. "Because I knew you'd be like this!"

"Expecting the truth?" he retorted.

"Rule one," Rose said, in her nasty, Jackie Tyler tone. "The Doctor lies."

There was a brief pause, then the Doctor spoke softly, dangerously. "Don't use those words against me. I have my reasons."

She scoffed at him openly. "And so do I!"

"Fine! What are they?" he challenged.

"I wanted my life back! And it all went wrong! It always goes wrong. Every time you send me away, it always goes wrong!" She turned away from him before he could see her expression, and she pressed her hands to her face. "I loved him, I still do, I think, but I wasn't enough for him, he knew that the Bad Wolf could kill me but he did it anyway so we could travel - and that was killing me too - not to mention he wasn't you, and you knew that when you shoved him at me, Doctor, but I don't think you even cared - "

"You think I wanted to send you away?" The Doctor stared at her, the back of her t-shirt raised, a thin line of skin visible above her skirt. "I'm sorry it didn't work out."

"Yeah, well," she started, her voice thick, and he fought the urge to find a handkerchief. Not the time, yet. "I lied because I wanted you to think it was … monsters and adventure and not just him swanning off with a TARDIS." She stopped, then added quickly, "He left. He did. But he came back, and we were trying it on again, Doctor, and he told me I had to come quickly because something was happening and then - "

Just as he stood, she went dead-silent and sobbed, once. He pulled her into his arms, though she pushed at him, and held onto her, loosely enough, but just enough to be present. "They took him, you said before."

"They must've," Rose said firmly, and looked up at him. "He wouldn't have left me. Not like that."

The Doctor might have had his doubts, but he was hardly going to voice them. "Obviously," he said, then, still holding onto her casually, "he's found us, with the Bad Wolf's help. Best we have a conversation to hash things out, don't you think?"

"Are you going to talk him into agreeing with you?" Rose very nearly smiled. "He's not fond of that. He's like you were."

"He's also like I am," the Doctor said, upbeat enough. "Probably. It's worth a try."

Rose pulled away from him, and wiped her eyes impatiently. "God, I'm glad I didn't put on a full face this morning."

He spoke without thinking, really. "I think you look lovely."

She turned and looked at him, frozen, and her face was unreadable. He looked at her, hoping she'd say something that would clarify things, but she didn't. "We should find him," she said, more withdrawn than before. "And see what he has to say for himself."

The Doctor had this perfect image of seizing Rose, madly kissing her until she went tense in the best possible way, of distracting her from all of the things he'd wreaked upon her life, most of all himself. But that wasn't an option.

"Come along, Rose," he said, and smiled. He left the room first, and, eventually, she followed.

Shaun Temple was not a stupid man, the Doctor noted, but nor was he an astrophysicist. "But it's bigger on the inside," he protested at Donna, pulling at her sleeve, as the Doctor mouthed the words along with him.

"Isn't it clever?" the Doctor announced, not expecting anyone to argue. "Whole dimension in a phonebox!"

"Can't I do this for once?" Donna argued. "He's my husband."

"It's my time machine," the Doctor pointed out. "It's not your time machine, last I checked."

"It's a time machine? Of course it's a time machine," Shaun said, still staring around at the TARDIS interior. "Why wouldn't it be a time machine?"

"That's the spirit, Shaun old boy!" the Doctor said brightly. "Why not indeed!"

"I'm... pretty sure that's not what he meant," Rory interjected, raising a hand.

"Good to meet you, I'm Amy Pond," Amy greeted Shaun, shaking his hand.

"Williams," Rory reminded her.

"Yeah, not really," Amy said, without missing a beat, and grinned.

The Doctor glanced back to see Rose slip into the console room, arms wrapped tightly around herself, and started typing like a madman on the nearest keyboard on the console. "Right! So! Everyone's on board, welcome, Shaun, you might want to find a handy seat - Amy! Rory! Where did all the chairs go?"

"You said they were clutter and yelled at the TARDIS at it, oh, about four trips ago," Rory told him. "Is that a problem? I don't think you should yell at the TARDIS again, though. I'd like to be able to get tea instead of whiskey with some sort of measurable certainty."

"I think that's a feature, not a bug, personally," Amy chimed in, dryly.

"Not a problem, just clear space for the greenhorn if we run into some turbulence," the Doctor said, happily distracted by the task at hand. "Ah! Here we are! We're being followed, like Donna said, so there should be a signal for whatever ship is nearest by - well, he's probably keeping his distance if he doesn't know Donna is in here and all…" He gestured back at her, and there was a pointed cleared throat. He paused and looked back at Shaun. "What?"

"What are you saying about my wife?" Shaun asked sharply, at being acknowledged. "Is someone after Donna?"

"No, no, no no no," Donna interrupted him, and put a hand on his arm. "This is - the other one."

"The Doctor with the sticky-uppy hair," Shaun clarified.

"Sort of," Donna had to concede. "It's the one I sort of switched places with. Turns out he's been alive all along!"

Shaun looked alarmed. "The one you said was sort of you...ish?"

"I know, it's scary, isn't it," the Doctor piped up, and Amy elbowed him in the ribs. "Oh! There he is. I don't like it," he realized, upon sighting what had to be the young TARDIS, disguised as a 1940s-era wardrobe, rather conspicuously perched on the corner of the street Donna and Shaun lived on.

"Neither did I," Rose spoke up, with the faintest smile when the Doctor glanced back at her.

"Is that a TARDIS?" Amy interjected, hanging over the Doctor's shoulder to get a better look.

"In the loosest sense, yes," the Doctor answered, cheerfully flippant, and initiated contact with it.

"But there can't be more TARDIS...es," Rory pointed out. "Can there? Do they grow on trees or something?"

"Not trees," the Doctor answered, distracted enough by the call not going through right away. "But he grew one. My idea. Not a great idea."

"Doctor," Rose said, chiding.

"I'm not wrong! Here we are." The call connected, and there he was - the him who wasn't quite him or really him at all - or maybe more him than he was right now. It was all very confusing. Either way, there he was, all mussed hair and dark eyes vibrant with determination and fear. "Hello," he greeted him.

"Hello," John returned, and glanced around at what he could see on his scanner of the TARDIS interior. "Steampunk much?"

"Is that a problem, Mr… Judgey-Person? Let us have a look at yours, then." The Doctor smiled only for a split second as John grinned, and turned the scanner around to show him the sleek mixed metal and coral interior. "Oh, that's clever, I like it!"

"It got stuck like this halfway through and I decided I liked it, so," John said grandly, offscreen, then swung the scanner back to his face and punk rock t-shirt.

"Really, did I accidentally turn on a DIY channel or are you two going to sit here comparing TARDIS desktop themes?" Donna interrupted, in a fine cheery imitation of annoyance.

All of the joy left John's face in that instant. "Donna? DONNA. What did you do?" he demanded of the Doctor.

"Nothing more than you have," the Doctor said tartly. "Blame the Bad Wolf. Donna's fine, well, she's still a pain, but she's handy - "

"Oh." John paused. "You've been talking to her, too." Then it struck him, and he exhaled heavily. "Rose, she's - really? - even after the cracks? I'd just... how?"

Rose came up behind the Doctor, still sullen and closed off. "You know how."

There was that Jackie Tyler tone again. "Now," the Doctor said hurriedly, before that could escalate any further, "I want you to explain why you're - wait, no, how about what the hell you've been doing - that would be a good start, let's go with that."

"Doctor," Donna interrupted, and he glanced at her, simultaneously answering her alongside John with a "What?"

The Doctor looked up at John. "You… are not the Doctor," he said, slowly, with great concern.

"Technically," John said, cheerfully, "I am. So are you! Funny how that works. Thought you'd have got the hang of this by now, being older than I am and all, but senility, you know."

"No, you're not," the Doctor said, frowning. "You never were. You're… I know I'm prone to forgetting things, comes with the regeneration thing, but you only have one heart, how do you not notice something that..." He looked at his company of mostly-humans. "Never mind."

"I would notice that if it were true," John said, clearly annoyed and searching the Doctor's face for clues. "Is there a good reason you're trying to manipulate me?"

"John," Rose spoke up, her voice with a definite edge, "you need to stop. You can't go run off and be the Doctor. You're human, or at least partly. You can't do the things he does, not all of them, you can't be half as stupid - "

"Excuse me," the Doctor said, offended.

"Oh please, like you don't milk your regenerative ability for all it's worth," Donna chimed in from behind them.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "John," he said, patiently. "Why do you have a different TARDIS?"

John glanced around. "You crashed yours," he said, as though it was obvious.

"Well - yes I did - but I didn't ever fly that," the Doctor sputtered, and glanced around to see Amy hiding laughter into her hands. "Pond! No! No laughing! This is serious!"

"You're not making sense," Rose insisted.

"And you were supposed to be dead. The Vortex told me you were dead," John snapped right back. "Obviously someone's lying to all of us. Warping everything. Someone's using us."

"I'll believe that," the Doctor said, exchanging a look with Donna. "Shaun, we need some takeaway for the lot, John and I are going to chat - "

"Not alone you aren't," Rose said, unimpressed.

"Rose," John said, aggravated. "I am perfectly capable of getting along with myself."

Rose sighed heavily. "You're joking, right? I'm staying with you. Both of you. We'll bring John here, see if we can jog his memory with the real TARDIS. We'll be right there," she said to John through the cam-link, and shut it off before he could open his mouth and protest. "Come on."

There was a silence between when the Doctor nodded and everyone else realized the five-act drama was on intermission, and they did their best to begin to chatter as though they had not been listening intently the entire time. "Anyone want Chinese?" Donna asked, all loudly and cheerfully, and Shaun cheered, leading the Ponds out of the TARDIS.

"That was subtle," Rose said, with a sigh.

He shook his head at her. "You really don't have to stay with us. Go. Eat. Nothing's going to happen," he insisted. "I may be dangerous but I know that he's - " Important to you. No, he couldn't say that. "One of us. No matter how it looks."

"Fine." Rose's eyebrows raised, but she said nothing else, taking up her jacket and going outside as she pulled it on. The Doctor ran after her, his mind only freezing up for a nanosecond at the sight of John before a strategy clearly presented itself to him. "Hello," he greeted John.

"I thought that was a bowtie, and there it is, a bowtie," John noted. "Why is it a bowtie?"

"Why would it not be a bowtie, is the better question, I think," the Doctor said, fixing it primly.

"Do we need to go over the bowtie thing each time?" Rose asked, looking between them. "Let's go back to the TARDIS."

"I don't know if your TARDIS is actually neutral ground. Our TARDIS. That one," John specified, pointing at the phonebox. "Still - " Rose was giving him the eyes like gimlets. "All right! Let's go."

"Fantastic!" the Doctor cheered, and led the way, only misstepping clumsily for no apparent reason once or twice on the walk back. "We're ordering takeaway, you can join us once you check out as not being an evil duplicate."

"Probably not an evil duplicate. Duplicate, possibly," John allowed, as the Doctor opened the door of the TARDIS. "If I'm evil I'm not very good at it, and I'm generally very good at things."

"Oh, well, he's definitely John," Rose said under her breath.

"Anyway, I have my own TARDIS. Do you really need more people on this TARDIS? I could just take Rose and go," John said, offhand, and looked mildly offended at the expression Rose sent him. "If you want, if you want! I thought that was implied!"

"I wasn't inviting you on to my crew," the Doctor said, with a brittle smile. "I was inviting you to dinner."

Now John looked actively offended. The Doctor wasn't about to apologize, and carried on, with a casual mention to tea or whiskey in the kitchen. When John reached for the Doctor's jacket - he turned, immediately, and challenged him with a look. "You are not me, John. You are what I've worked so hard not to be."

"Stop calling me John," he said heatedly. "You know what my name is - "

The Doctor seized John by the hair, thought quickly, and slammed his forehead against John's. "Doctor," Rose exclaimed, startled, and unfortunately the psychic link went both ways and in a millennium or two he hadn't actually stumbled across a psyche this tortured and manipulated. Something had changed, something he wasn't sure could be changed back, but when John stumbled back, the look of plain horror on his face meant that the psychic exchange had at least borne the fruit he'd meant it to.

"But I'm - " John got out, and the Doctor rubbed his forehead, only then noticing the distress Rose was in at the state of him. "I'm - I know I am - I'm - " He pressed his hand to the left side of his chest, then to his right, and froze. "I..."

"Doctor you have to help him, something's wrong," Rose protested, hauling him forward by the hand. "Please, I'm - look at his eyes, I don't want, he has to, oh, God - "

How had this all escalated so quickly? The Doctor pressed his forehead to John's, then, as he shook, and kept his breath steady and his mind clear. Sleep. Sleep. It didn't take much. John was already on the brink of passing out there and then, and it would be easier to take him to the sick bay this way. "Rose," he said, just feeling her tense and beside him, "it's going to be all right. I think it's starting to make sense."

"How," Rose said, as levelly as a half-hysterical person could manage, "does this make sense?"

"There's only one way to test a Doctor-trap." The Doctor hefted John over his shoulder, wavering on his feet, then hurried up. "Come on! I'm sure I've a stretcher somewhere but for now I'm just going to have to do."

"You have to tell me something about what's going on," Rose pressed. "And if you say 'I'll explain later,' I will hurt you." Still, she followed, again, and he grinned to himself before putting on an expression more befitting of war, brainwashing, and time travel chess.