Disclaimer: I don't own Dr Who, I leave that privilege to the BBC.

Author's Note:

So this is my re-write of the Season Three episode "Utopia", set in my "One Moment in Time" universe, showing how Tejana meets the Master for the first time since the Time War, prior to being imprisoned on board the Valiant,. The end of the Universe will be their beginning...

This has been sitting around on my hard drive for a while, collecting dust, so I thought I may as well post it. There's a bit more too, obviously, which I will probably post later. Some time. Maybe.

Summary: "Wherever they were headed, there was something critical waiting for her, she could feel it. She didn't know how and she didn't know why, but she suddenly felt as if she was on The Titanic, heading for the biggest iceberg of all, something with the potential to derail her entire life..." Re-write of the episode 'Utopia', set in my "One Moment in Time" universe - Eventual Master/OC (as you would know, if you've read the series).

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." - T.S. Eliot

XXX

- Chapter One -

The control room of the TARDIS was unusually quiet when Martha Jones emerged from the interior door, her dark hair still damp from the shower. The time-rotor was humming contentedly, oscillating smoothly up and down, and the Doctor had his head bent over the console, his black-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose as he fussed over some of the complex dials and levers, occasionally muttering to himself.

Tejana sat nearby in the yellow pilot seat, her legs curled comfortably underneath her. She was deeply absorbed in a paperback book and was paying no attention to her father whatsoever.

Martha walked over to her friend and leaned over to try to catch a glimpse of the title of her book. "What are you reading?"

To her surprise, Tejana held the book out of her reach, refusing to show it to her. "Nothing!"

"Oh, come on," Martha said. "Whatever it is, it's obviously got you hooked. You've even been crying!"

Tejana scowled defensively. "I have not!"

"Oh, you have! Your eyes are all red!" Martha grinned. Tejana was normally so self-controlled, it was a rare joy to have a chance like this to tease her. "Oh, go on, tell me what it is! It is some sort of sappy romance, is that why you won't show me?"

"If you must know," Tejana replied, gathering her scattered dignity around her like a cloak. "It's the seventh Harry Potter book."

Martha stared at her. "The seventh book?" she echoed. "But the sixth book has only just come out! The final book won't be published until next year sometime!"

This time it was Tejana's turn to grin mockingly. "Hel-lo?" she said in a sing-song voice, gesturing around her. "Time machine, remember?"

"Oh, give me a look!" Martha begged, intrigued by the idea of reading a book that hadn't even been written yet in her own time-line. "I love Harry Potter. Why were you crying? Does someone die?"

Stretching out her arm, she tried again to grab the book, only to have Tejana slip off the seat and twirl away beyond her reach.

"Uh-uh-uh!" she taunted, dangling the book enticingly high in the air. "Privileged information - Time Lord eyes only!"

Martha growled and leapt after her, and was soon chasing her back and forth around the console, both of them giggling like maniacs as they dodged around the startled Doctor.

"Oi, you two!" he protested. "I'm in the middle of some delicate recalibration calculations here, you know!"

Tejana cheekily poked her tongue out at her father and then went to sit back down on the pilot seat to resume reading her book. The Doctor rolled his eyes at her good-humouredly, before going back to what he was doing. "Kids!"

"So where are we headed then, Doctor?" Martha asked, looking over his shoulder, hoping to see the name of somewhere exotic coming up on the navigational screen.

"Cardiff," he replied abstractedly.

Martha's face fell in disappointment. "Cardiff?" she echoed. In her opinion, Cardiff was about as exotic as a pair of wet wellington boots. Here she was, travelling through time and space with a nine hundred year old alien and his daughter in their miraculous time machine, and the best they could come up with was Cardiff?

The Doctor caught her dismayed expression and his brown eyes twinkled. "Ah, but the thing about Cardiff is that it's built on a rift in time and space - just like California and the San Andreas Fault," he told her. "The rift bleeds energy. Every now and then I need to open up the engines, soak up the energy and use it as fuel."

"So it's a pit-stop?" Martha felt her spirits rising as she realised this was going to be a very short visit to Wales after all. Besides, it didn't really matter where they went. She could never stay down when in his company - just looking into those gorgeous brown eyes was always enough to brighten her day.

"Exactly," the Doctor confirmed, oblivious to her adoring glance. "Should only take twenty seconds. Tejana, come over here and finish these calculations for me while I land her, will you?"

The dark-haired girl put down her book, yawned with the air of someone who had seen it all before, and wandered over to stand beside him, taking over the keyboard he had been working on. The Doctor activated the landing controls and a panoramic view of Roald Dahl Plass filled the TARDIS viewscreen, the magnificent Millennium fountain taking pride of place.

The Doctor flicked a couple of switches, his eyebrows raised in faint surprise. "The Rift's been active..." he murmured.

"Wait a minute!" Martha exclaimed, suddenly remembering that this particular part of the Earth hadn't always been quite so boring. "They had an earthquake in Cardiff a couple of years ago. Was that you?"

The Doctor and Tejana exchanged a guilty glance, like two children caught out doing something naughty.

"Bit of trouble with the Slitheen..." Tejana said with a wry grimace, as her fingers continued to dance over the keyboard in front of her.

"Long time ago," the Doctor mused, staring into space. "Lifetimes. I was a different man back then."

Martha watched his face, wondering what memories he was seeing, wishing he would share them with her. But she had been travelling with him long enough now to know better than to ask. Neither he nor Tejana ever liked talking about themselves. As far as they were concerned, their personal past was a closed book. Like the seventh Harry Potter book just now, it was one that Martha wasn't allowed to open.

At that moment, a small beep from the console seemed to drag the Time Lord back to the present.

"Finito," he said in satisfaction, double checking a small dial on one of the control panels. "All powered up."

"Doctor!" The sharp, almost panicked urgency in Tejana's voice made both the Doctor and Martha whirl around to look at her. She had stopped typing and was staring at the small view-screen on the console, her face tight with shock. A handsome dark-haired man in a long, blue coat was rapidly running across the Plass towards the TARDIS, his mouth stretched wide in a soundless shout, a large pack bouncing awkwardly on his back.

The newcomer didn't look particularly threatening as far as Martha could see but, at the sight of him, the Doctor's face went strangely white. His hand shot out like lightning and slammed down the de-materialisation lever as fast as he could.

"No! What are you doing?" Tejana screamed, as the time rotor began once more to oscillate. "That was Jack! Doctor, that was Jack!"

Outside, something struck the exterior of the TARDIS with a huge amount of force and everything inside lurched and shook. The three time travellers were hurled bodily to the floor as green sparks streamed from the time-rotor in a crackling cascade and a high-pitched whining sound filled the air.

"Whoa! What's happening?" Martha cried, desperately trying to keep herself in one place by clinging on to the shuddering console. Not far away, on the Doctor's other side, Tejana was doing exactly the same thing.

The Doctor dragged himself back up to the navigational monitor, brushing some sparks out of his hair. Smoke was billowing all around them, filling the room.

"We're accelerating into the future!" he yelled back, one foot planted on the console to maintain his balance, all his concentration centred on the wildly spinning diagrams on the screen in front of him. "The year one billion. Five billion. Five trillion. Fifty trillion. What? The year one hundred trillion. That's impossible!"

At the bewildered sound of his voice, Martha felt a cold screw of fear gyrating inside her stomach. The Doctor always knew what was going on – in all the time she had known him, no matter what disaster had befallen them, his calm unflappability had always been as certain as the rising of the sun. But if even he was alarmed...how bad could it possibly be?

"Why? What happens then?"

The Doctor's eyes were wide with incredulity. For a moment, his lips worked and no sound came out. Then he managed to croak, "We're going to the end of the Universe."

Tejana could sense the TARDIS shooting through the Time Vortex, like a bullet fired from a gun. Behind her closed eyelids, visions of Captain Jack Harkness flashed in and out of her brain, running so lithely across the Plass, not dead, not disintegrated by the Daleks, but as large as life... Her hearts twisted painfully at the impossible images and the pressure inside her head seemed immense, as if a giant fist was crushing her mind. Panic rose inside her. Wherever they were headed, there was something critical waiting for her, she could feel it. She didn't know how and she didn't know why, but she suddenly felt as if she was on The Titanic, heading for the biggest iceberg of all, something with the potential to derail her entire life.

Stop it, she wanted to scream at the Doctor, her knuckles white with strain as she dug her fingers into the console. You have to stop this now, before it's too late!

But just one look at his horrified face as the situation continue to escalate soon told her that he could no more stop the TARDIS than she could.

At last, just as she thought she could bear it no longer, the time machine gave an enormous shudder and was still. The time-rotor seemed to give an exhausted sigh, before slowly subsiding back into the console.

"Well, we've landed," the Doctor said, breaking the sudden, shocked silence. "Is everyone all right?"

"Fine," Martha answered in evident relief.

"Tejana?"

She faced him, standing tall, every line in her slender body as taut as a wire. "No!" she snapped, her eyes blazing, fury and fear churning through her in equal measure. "I'm not all right! What the hell did you do that for? Don't you get it, that was Jack back there!"

To her utter bewilderment, her father's expression remained closed and unreadable. "Yes, I know."

"But he was alive!" she shouted, frustrated at his apparent incomprehension, unable to understand why he wasn't as stunned and elated as she was. "He was alive and you left him behind!"

The Doctor didn't answer. He merely looked down at the console and fiddled with some of the dials, his face as still as stone.

"Oh gods," she whispered, her hand coming up to cover her mouth as the awful realisation suddenly struck her. "You knew. You knew he was alive all the time and you let me think the Daleks killed him."

His mouth tightened into a hard, uncompromising line. "I had my reasons," he said curtly.

Tejana shook her head in bitter incredulity, sickness rising from the pit of her stomach as the enormity of his newest betrayal slowly sank in. All that time she had spent grieving for Jack, all the sorrow and self-blame she had suffered, and all along the Doctor had known none of it was necessary.

"You liar!" she exclaimed in a low voice, loaded with venom. "You disgusting, filthy liar! How could you?"

He took a step towards her, his hand raised entreatingly towards her. "Tejana..."

"No...no, don't you touch me!" she spat, backing away from him. "You never change, do you? After everything you did in the Time War and still, you never, never change!"

Trembling with rage, she whirled around and ran for the exterior doors, not caring where she went, just desperate to get as far away from him as possible.

"Wait, Tejana, you can't go out there!" he called urgently after her. "Not even the Time Lords came this far! We can't stay here, we have to go!"

"Don't you dare tell me what to do!" she snarled. "Don't you dare!"

With that she wrenched open the doors and tumbled out into the darkness.