A/N: Written for who_contest's Prompt: Law and Order. NOT my Usual Dark, but still Overly Thinky! (GASP!) Eleventy generally does that to me - and though this was 'thought' in his Voice, there are slight hints/references to other Doctors. Very little of The Angst but instead a little touch of that bittersweetness added in for flavor. Written in one go...AGAIN (sorry!) so do forgive any roughness to the piece. For all its faults, I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer(s): I do not own the scrumptious Doctor or his lovely companions. That honor goes to the BBC and (for now) the fantastic S. Moffat. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about!

The Time-Lords tried to impose it.

The Daleks, the Cyberman tried to disrupt and control it.

The Order of the Silence tried to restructure it.

The trick was – there was no such thing.

Laws of the Universe. The Order within.

It was a laugh, it was the Ultimate Cosmic Joke (and the Cosmos did like its jokes).

He could see the strings of could, might be, never was, should be and all the fixed points in between. They scattered through his vision, wove their patterns (intricate, delicate, strong and fragile) through the restless meanderings of his daydreams and nightmares. He walked them with his Companions – golden tapestries that tangled and unraveled with his every blink, breath, heartbeat. His TARDIS sailed those patterns without a hitch, instinctively knowing where/when/how to go, Her own vision even more complex than his.

He could see Her Dreams.

The paths that were, never were and all the in-betweens and knows what it is like (for a brief flicker of Time) to be one of the people by his side; Her Dreams, Her Sight, Her Knowing so vast compared to even his own it staggered him. He could see the Universe, name every star planet and history.

She was that History.

He trekked the spaces that were laid before him, sailed the vast unknowns and knew – Law, Order, Chaos, Anarchy – these were mere concepts. Mere jokes that the Universe played for Its amusement. There was no such thing as Law (every construction of it placed on its head before you stepped into a TARDIS the first time); there was no such thing as Order (not when everything happened all at once, everywhere, every-when).

The impossible was the only thing that existed.

The improbable was always around the corner.

That was the Truth.

That was the funny the vastness of Time had at one's expense. Law and Order (and the anti-thesis of the same) were concepts created to be broken. They were designed to show you what did not exist. Newton's dreams? Pah – pipe dreams. Einstein's ideals? So much smoke before a strong wind. He lived within those concepts, even as he sat outside them – he understood something his people never could: You cannot control what does not exist. You cannot dictate what is a mere fancy.

He depended on the fact that these fallacies were thought of, but unable to hold true. It was what helped him defeat his enemies, it was what kept him sailing in (and out and around and through) the Universe, even when all odds said that he should no longer exist.

After all, if Gallifrey no longer existed (had never existed, always existed, was centuries gone just yesterday) how could he possibly still be breathing in a universe that no longer recognized him?

The Truth of the Universe was what aided him in resetting it.

It was what called him back from the (Void) In-Between. It was what guided him around the fixed points that couldn't be navigated past (a Doctor within a Doctor). It was what brought River into being. It was what brought him home to his beautiful living soul within a mechanical construct again and again and again.

But sometimes even the fact that the Law and Order that didn't exist (couldn't exist) defied itself, twisting and doubling back on him. By the very fact it couldn't be, it was.

That was the joke.

It was the joke that killed Adric.

It was the joke that (has-will) destroy River (even as it helped her into being).

It was the Death that crept after him and blackened the lives of everyone he encountered.

It was the Life he tried to preserve even as it slipped through his fingers.

It was what brought him ever on, even against all odds, fixing what he could, mourning what he could not.

The Time-Lords tried to pin it down, create order and laws out of nothing, stagnating within the confines of something they could never control, even as they had the best idea of what lay out there. It eventually killed them, their rigidity in the face of something that changed and bent and twisted and swayed within itself their own undoing. The Universe does not like a rock against its stream. And eventually, Gallifrey wore away under the universal laws of no law.

The Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans (the list goes ever on) laughably kept trying to destroy and corrupt the ideals of law and order within the Universe. Defeating themselves again and again as they hit their proverbial heads against a wall that could never exist.

But the Order of the Silence was the most dangerous. Following behind him, setting his rights wrong again; smearing his name across the Universe as they went. Hell nipping at his heels as Heaven lay just ahead. Using his own skills, tactics and understanding to dismantle his own history and rewrite it as they saw fit.

But none of them understood (even as he understood and yet had no grasp of) the way the system worked. The Universe liked the Madman within a Box. Even as it destroyed him piece by piece, year by year – it built him back up, gave him an out, a reason and triumph at every turn.

The Universe had no Law (it had The Doctor) it had no Order (it had the TARDIS).

The Chaos and Anarchy of the Cosmos spun like threads before the loom of their reweaving. The dancing of the spheres, the wilds of the unknown, the vast expanses of silent blackness…all were seen, acknowledged and loved by these two beings. Their adventures, their joys, their sorrows and pain spiraled out across Time to connect with those threads they could see so clearly.

In defiance of their People (even as They tried to stop them again and again), until They were no more, Their Name only an echo in the face of the Time They endeavored to control.

To the great consternation of their Enemies (as They rose and fell before them), all efforts to defeat them turned aside, deconstructed, scattered to the solar winds They wished to harness.

The Doctor and his TARDIS.

The uncertainty principal in physical being; the only constant in an inconsistent reality.

The Universes' manifest answer to Law and Order.