AN:*cringes* Heeeeeey. I'm back. So here's...this, for those of you who are still reading. I kind of fell away from the DW fandom for a while, but this story I had planned would come back to me from time to time...

Also, in case any of you were confused about timelines: yes, it has only been about 1 year since Canary Wharf in *linear* time, but keep in mind that the parties involved are time-travellers, so you can't go by that. Remember that we only get a glimpse of events through the show: and I refuse to believe that after BWB *and* Donna rejecting him, that the Doctor would be up to asking *another* person aboard right away. Thus, the time gap.

Aaaaaaaaand, Action!

o0o0o0o0o

Elizabeth Winters was not a violent person. Though perhaps not as popular as her predecessors, those that really knew the current First Lady of the United States of America would have described her as cheerful, stubborn, kind, and above all, a loyal wife. She had stood by her husband unflinchingly through grueling elections, defended him to his dissenters throughout his controversial Governorship, made every public appearance by his side through primaries and speeches and campaign rallies, until finally, finally, they'd made it into the highest office in the land, his arm wrapped around her as they waved out at the people who had put them there. It had been the happiest day in both of their lives.

She never thought it would end like this.

She had known, in a purely scholarly sort of way, that the job of President carried with it a 20% mortality rate. She had known that there was a damn good reason her husband had to be surrounded by Secret Service Agents at all times for the past eight years, and would—would have—had them for the rest of his life. It was simply the nature of the job, as a world leader, and certainly not unique to their own country. Just three years ago, in fact, the Prime Minister had been killed in a terrorist attack on 10 Downing Street, though some said (and she believed this, now) it had been aliens…

Saxon…

That man had specifically requested her husband be here to take over First Contact. Let him have the honor of welcoming the supposedly-friendly visitors to their planet to begin a new era of trade and prosperity.

But it had all been a lie, a trap; her husband's murder was only to be the first of many under the evil (alien?) man and his terrifying servants.

The room around her had become nothing more than meaningless sound and color from the moment her husband had dissolved into smoke and light, though she did process just enough to know that they were all going to die. Their own guards turned against them, millions of the metal monsters pouring into earth from a broken sky, the one (also alien?) man who bothered to try and stop him had the youth sucked right out of him…they were doomed.

Until rather suddenly, they weren't.

She was too numb to care much at that point, but she did think it was rather odd a child was the one to save them all. It all happened too fast to see, but she definitely noticed Saxon going down as the room began to shudder, along with a voice rising above the din that gave her a tiny, painful spark of hope.

"Time's reversing!" Time. Time was being rewound, like a cassette tape. The metal spheres were blinking out of existence more abruptly than they'd arrived; the strange man in pinstripes was reverting to his normal age, and her husband…

She stared at the empty podium, waiting. Any second now, he'd reappear and she'd run to him, and…

Nothing.

He was still gone.

…

Harold Saxon had recovered, though, up and able and alive, taunting the guards around him, smirking at everyone without a care in the world. Her husband's murder wasn't even an afterthought, to him.

She began to walk forward, slowly. She wasn't entirely sure what she intended to do once she got there, but—

Her foot knocked into something. She reached down and picked it up.

The gun felt very, very right in her hands.

The look of shock on the man's face as the bullet ripped through his chest wasn't nearly enough to make up for what he'd done, but it did bring a small, brittle smile to her face before she was swarmed by guards.

o0o0o0o0o

After Rose had dropped the Bad Wolf bombshell on him-(and oh, it was a big one, but there were still so many things he still didn't know…she couldn't help but wonder what he would think of her when everything was all out in the open)—the Doctor had merely stared for a long, tense moment, a pained look etched into the deepened lines of his face, before he slowly let his forehead drop to her shoulder, face hidden, joined hands still hanging between them, and her name passing from his lips in a moaned whisper.

"…I…I took it from you…" he insisted.

Rose sighed. She knew that he wasn't being deliberately obstinate, and that he didn't think she was lying—but he'd always had trouble accepting anything that didn't fit within his parameters of reality, even if the truth was literally staring him in the face. (Or hanging above his head, as the case may be.) For all that he'd teased her, in the early days, for being a narrow-minded ape, his own myopia would pop up at the oddest moments and she'd remember that as brilliant as he was, and as much as he'd like everyone to believe otherwise, he didn't know everything.

But being familiar with and accepting this particular personality quirk that was simply part of the wonderful package deal that was the Doctor, didn't make it any less frustrating to deal with.

She turned her head slightly, and suddenly found her nose buried in his still-fantastic hair. The achingly familiar scent nearly overwhelmed her, and she had to take a moment to collect herself and regain the levity in her voice.

"You removed the excess Vortex energy, yes," she admitted to the top of his head. She waited until he lifted his head from her shoulder and looked her in the eye.

(He looked as tired as she felt.)

"But...?" he hedged when she didn't continue. She squeezed his hand again.

"But not all of it was yours to take," she said quietly, kindly, trying to convey to him that he did nothing wrong in this particular instance, that she didn't blame him for any of it, even the bits he didn't know about yet, and that he certainly shouldn't blame himself. When he continued to stare at her despondently, she told him this a little more explicitly. He looked incredulous, but mercifully chose not to protest her claim. He wasn't ready to drop the subject yet, however.

"But I still don't..." he swallowed back the word 'understand' before it could betray him, but she still knew. His frame was wrought with frustration and anger and guilt, all of it self-directed, and as badly as she wished they could just wrap themselves in each other and leave the world behind until every last hurt was soothed, every question answered, she knew that they would have to wait. Her time apart from him had at least improved her patience, among other things.

She counted it as a minor victory when, as she raised her fingers to stroke the days-old stubble on his cheek, the tense set of his shoulders relaxed, ever so slightly. His lovely eyes became softer at the touch and she sighed.

(God, she'd missed him.)

"I know, an' I'm sorry, but it'll have to wait. It's... A bit complicated, and you deserve a proper explanation. So let's talk after we get this all sorted, yeah?" He smiled ruefully.

"I suppose... That's best, yes." His smile widened, taking on a teasing edge. "I'm going to have to refamiliarize myself with being bossed around, it seems." She scoffed. She knew by the glint in his eye that he was teasing her, and decided to play along.

"Occasionally knocking some common sense into that planet-sized brain if yours is hardly 'bossing you around'. Need I remind you of the Blemberry jam incident of 4905?"

(She still didn't know how a 900-year-old man could pull off the puppy-dog pout so well, but it was there on his face, nonetheless.)

"I still submit that it would have been worth it." She shook her head.

"You would have been sticky for weeks, Doctor. And I bet you ten quid-still owe me, by the way-that I would have been the one to get your suit clean. You know it's true," she said, admonishing. He grinned down at her.

"I know," he admitted easily. Her breath caught, just a little, at the hint of wonder that crept into his next words. "You take care of me so well, Rose. All the little things, and some of the big ones, that I forget, you did-you do them for me," he said with more awe than she really thought the subject deserved. Surely he knew why she-and it wasn't as if he hadn't done more for her than her for him, for nothing could match what he'd given her-and hadn't anyone taken care of him while she was away? She really, really hoped so.

"S'not a big deal," she said honestly. She was no stranger to menial work, and besides that, "and since you're more than a bit useless with domestics, well…" she shrugged. She'd let lie the fact that she simply enjoyed doing all of those little simple things for him, for now. His eyes dimmed in sadness again.

"More than a bit useless in general, without you, Rose," he confessed in a murmur. Her heart ached for him, though it was now on his behalf, rather than in longing.

"You mean you didn't…" she swallowed. "Didn't travel with anyone else?"

His shoulders drew back tense again, this time in nervousness, and he rubbed the back of his head. "Well, I mean—most of the time, no…" Her face fell, and he hurried to elaborate.

"I—I couldn't—I mean, right after you—" he choked, unable to get the words out. "Just…after, well, there was this—this mad, rude, ginger woman in a wedding dress literally just popped into the TARDIS—just appeared out of nowhere and started yelling at me for kidnapping her—I didn't, of course, there was this plot involving roboforms, killer Christmas trees—"

"Again? Really?" She muttered under her breath.

"-a giant alien spider queen and ancient, deadly energy that ended up with me accidentally draining the Thames—to save the world, of course, had to be done—but, ah, anyway, after everything was sorted….I asked Donna—that's her name, Donna Noble—to come with me." He looked morosely at his feet.

"Doctor—"

"She said no, though," he attempted to say casually, but the twinge in his eyes let her know that that rejection hadn't been easy on him, especially if it was so soon after she'd…

Just, after. That was how she had been demarcating her life for years, now, into simply befores and afters of various kinds, and she saw no need to change that now.

"I wish she hadn't," she sighed. The Doctor looked up in surprise. She shook her head at him. "Doctor, just because I couldn't be there with you, didn't mean I wanted you to be alone. I'd never want that for you. It was—hard enough, on my end, but I had—"

(-Don't think about them, don't, not right now-)

"—Tony and other people there with me. I can't imagine what it would have been like if I hadn't." She looked up at him pleadingly, willing him to understand, to know that she understood, now. "Because I've no doubt you've been wandering the universe still, all this time... but all of that wonder doesn't mean much without this," she held up their joined hands between them, recalling that bittersweet day, their last mostly-carefree adventure, and the Doctor's words to the lonely, lost, alien child:

But the one thing you need most, to travel the Universe, is a hand to hold.

"I know," he said quietly, gazing reverently down at their entwined fingers with eyes shining as dark and luminous as the galaxies he'd traversed with her. It took her breath away.

She didn't think he was talking about needing palm contact and companionship, anymore.

She was only a few centimeters away before she noticed she'd moved closer. His eyes had moved from their hands to her face, from her eyes down to her lips, and—

That was when they heard the shot.

Without even a word of acknowledgement for what had been about to happen—(and dear God, Rose hoped it had been)—they adjusted their joined hands, moved out from the doorway, and did what they did best.

They ran.

o0o0o0o0o

After pulling Tony and Martha down below the potential line of fire, Jack sprang to his feet to assess the situation. He quickly realized that no more gunfire seemed to be erupting, and noticed that some of the guards were now cuffing an older woman with a smart dress-suit and a wan smile. The UNIT operatives appeared to be corralling the rest of the civilians into one corner of the room, and over by the podium, more guards had joined those still watching over the Master, who was lying on the ground again, clutching his chest—

Shit.

Jack had honed his voice of command to a razor's edge over the past hundred years, and used it to slice his way quickly through the mass of people between him and the podium.

"Martha!" He barked behind him, and she snapped her head up, quickly rushing to his side through the path he'd cleared, Tony following right behind her.

The Master was slumped against the podium, dark, arterial blood dripping between the fingers of the hand clutched to his chest, his other arm supporting him, his breathing ragged. He glared at them disdainfully beneath half-lidded eyes, hazy with pain.

"What? Can't you let me die in peace?" Tony snorted.

"Nothin' peaceful about death, mate," he said with his arms crossed, leaning against the far wall, peering down at the Master with an inscrutable expression. Jack tended to agree. Though he did wonder about the sureness of his tone, as if he knew… Well, Jack certainly did, but Tony really, really shouldn't, unless…

More things to ask about, later, then.

"I'm familiar with the process," the Time Lord told them dryly, with a roll of his eyes. He drew in a deep, ragged breath, then jerked his head towards Jack.

"You—you're a temporal obscenity. Your presence offends me. Go away," he ordered. Jack just raised an eyebrow.

"Not the first time I've heard that—well, the obscene bit, mostly," he amended with a tight smile. Tony rolled his eyes and muttered something unintelligible, but stayed against the wall, out of the way. "And, no," Jack continued. "Because as much as I'd love to see you dead and buried, that's not going to happen, not today." The Master just raised an eyebrow.

"Oh? And why's that then?" The sound of tearing cloth made all three heads jerk to the side, where Martha was ripping a black cotton shirt, next to a shirtless and rather embarrassed looking guard. With a final tug, the shirt was rendered into a single, long strip, and Martha stepped forward determinedly.

"Because I'm here, and I'm a doctor. Now, shut up and let me staunch this bleeding," she snapped at the bemused alien, who looked her up and down, then laughed.

"You?" That one word held as much derision as a single syllable could, and Martha's jaw twitched, though she did not pause in her actions.

"Jack, get him lying flat on the ground, head just a little propped up," she ordered, and Jack complied. Though the Master had seemed well enough to mouth off, it became apparent just how bad he really was when the arrogant man didn't struggle at all while being moved into his new position. Martha had peeled the man's hand off of his chest and quickly replaced it with her own, using her upper body weight to leverage more pressure on the wound. The Master groaned at the sudden change.

"Are you trying to kill me faster, Miss Jones?" He asked acerbically. Martha barely acknowledged him.

"You—shut up. One heart beating…" Martha muttered to herself, feeling the single pulse beating frantically under her hands. His blood was still pumping, keeping him alive, but it also meant it was pumping straight out of him, too. "We aren't going to be able to move him, not with him bleeding like this, and not with all these guards around. Don't think they'd let us," she muttered, then whipped her head up to face the immortal. "Jack, you're going to have to wrap that thing as tight as you can around his chest, try and slow the blood flow, get him stabilized," she nodded to the long strip of cloth she had obtained, and he grabbed it up quickly, working the strip over then under the Master's body, and avoiding Martha's bloodstained hands. He pulled it taut after the first loop, and the Master winced.

"Not too tight, he won't be able to breathe…" she warned, and Jack snorted.

"He has a respiratory bypass, that shouldn't be a problem," Jack said as he completed another, tighter loop. The Master glared balefully at him.

"Can't engage it while talking," he grunted. Martha raised an eyebrow at him.

"All the more reason for you to shut up," she repeated. The Master blinked at her vehemence, but remained mercifully silent as they completed two more loops.

It wasn't to last, though.

"I tried to kill you," he told Martha as casually as he could, considering the circumstances. Martha ignored him, except for a slight tightening of her jaw. He wasn't finished, though.

"And your family. I was going to torture them, slowly, and then I was going to kill you in front of them," he continued, trying to goad her into what, Jack wasn't sure. Martha's hands were really the only thing keeping him alive at the moment, and he had no idea why the Master seemed to be trying to remind Martha of all the reasons why she shouldn't be saving him. Her palms never moved from his chest once, though, and Jack couldn't help but feel just a little proud of her, seeing now, maybe, what the Doctor had seen in her that made him ask her to travel with him.

He could see a hint of confusion beneath the scorn in the Master's gaze, and Jack suddenly realized that the Master had no idea why they were trying to save him. To be honest, Jack wasn't totally sure either, but he did know one thing…

"Because it's the right thing to do," he blurted out, pausing in his wrapping. The Master stared up at him, eyebrow raised. Jack returned it. "Saving you, I mean—even if you are a bastard and probably deserve it, it's just…well, a human thing, I guess," he said with a grin, though it was really more of a Doctor thing, to be honest.

"And I'm saving you now because I'm—nearly—a doctor, and I took an oath, to save lives, not end them," she declared, subtly adding a bit more pressure to the wound, which had slowed it's bleeding a little more, but was still losing enough that Jack knew, with a resigned certainty, was fatal. He'd have to pull Martha away before the regeneration process started…

"I think you'll find some Doctors are a little more flexible when it comes to that, Miss Jones," the Master sneered, and Jack tensed. He knew the Doctor, the battered soldier version he had known, had had to have taken many, many lives, but he also knew it never would have been by choice. Martha narrowed her eyes at the prone man.

"There's also the fact that you can't answer for what you've done if you're dead, you arrogant sod," she informed him. The Master actually grinned.

"That won't be an issue, my dear," he said in a falsely sweet voice. There was a sudden commotion from the back of the room, and Jack sighed as he heard a furious, panicked voice approaching them rapidly.

"What happened?!" The Doctor stormed in, coat streaming behind him, Rose's hand clutched tight in his as she kept pace with him. Jack moved back and away from the Master, figuring he may well be shoved out of the way if he didn't. The Doctor dropped to his knees beside his old friend, finally releasing Rose's hand, only for his own hands to flutter uselessly above the Master's torso as he tried to find something to do. Rose had turned white as a sheet upon seeing the wound Martha's hands were currently covering.

After a moment of staring, however, Jack realized that Rose wasn't staring at Martha's hands-she was just staring at Martha, with such fear and recognition on her face, it was as if she'd seen a ghost.

Curious and wary of Rose's strange reaction to the other woman—jealously, he would have expected, maybe—he nonetheless filed his observation away for another time.

"Martha, what are you doing?" The Doctor asked more testily than he probably meant to. Martha scowled at him, anger lacing her voice at his own tone.

"Trying to save his life, he's bleeding out," she answered snippily. The Doctor tugged at his hair, wild eyes looking between Martha, Jack, Tony, Rose, and the Master with inhuman rapidity.

"He's lost too much, too much—he's, he can't survive this. Not like this," he ground out, then his eyes finally settled on the Master, who was smiling strangely up at him. The Doctor grabbed the other man by the shoulders, displacing Martha's hands, and nearly shook him.

"Come on, you know what you need to do," he bit out. "It's just a bullet, you can easily regenerate. Go on, quickly" he goaded. The insane man's smile widened, and crushed the Doctor's hope with one word.

"No," he said pleasantly. The Doctor just stared, uncomprehending.

"It's just a bullet," he repeated, incredulous, with a hint of mania edging into his voice. "Just one little bullet—regeneration's the only way, believe me, I know," he added with a flat, humorless laugh. But the Master just continued to smile, a pained glee in his eyes that Jack couldn't quite understand.

"I refuse," he laughed. The Doctor shook him again, this time well and truly panicked.

"But, no!" He exclaimed, drawing back to tug on his hair, only to lean forward and stare hard into the other mans' eyes a moment later. "I know you," he declared, and as he stared at his former friend, Jack wondered what face it was that he saw, or if he was seeing all of them. "I know you better than anyone, and if there's one thing I know for a fact, it's that you'll do anything to keep yourself alive," he said with surety, hope creeping back into his voice along with it. The Master merely snorted.

"It's cute that you think you know everything about me, Doctor, but I still refuse," he informed him, punctuating the end of his sentence with a cough. The Doctor shook.

"You—no, no, no! You can't—you have to!" He shook him again, hard this time. "You can't let it end like this—the, the Axons? Remember the Axons? The Deca? All the things we've done? We're the last, you can't just…" he trailed off helplessly. The Master laughed again. It wasn't a pleasant sound.

"Correction, my dear Doctor—you are the last Time Lord. How does it feel? In your head, the silence? Is it good?" The Master asked almost…hopefully. The Doctor choked back a sob.

"You can't regenerate, can you? You're out of them…" At Rose's quiet question, all eyes in the near vicinity turned to her in surprise. She was looking sadly between the Doctor and his dying friend, moving slowly beside the Doctor to grip his shoulder. The Doctor was looking between Rose and the Master, the dawning realization on his face quickly drowned out by grief.

But the Master was just staring at Rose as if he'd just noticed she was there, an incredulous expression on his face.

"I thought I got rid of you," he blurted out, the tiniest hint of fear in his tone. Rose's eyes had gone wide. The Doctor's head snapped back to the Master so fast it would have given a human whiplash.

"What," he said in a flat, dangerous tone. The Master tore his gaze away from the blonde and looked at the Doctor with a smirk, though it was more rueful than scornful now.

"Oh, you know what I mean. I had eighteen months to prepare, Doctor. Eighteen months to comb through the timelines, infiltrate the government, Torchwood—plenty of time to figure out what sort—cough—of situation to create that would just draw you in, when I found out—ha!—it was meant to happen anyway, had already happened for you…" His grin widened at the Doctor's horrified face. "Oh, now really—did you think those stunted little apes could have possibly created anything advanced enough to open the void on their own?"

"You…." The Doctor whispered, "you took her from me." The Master sneered.

"All I did was hold up my end of a causality loop. Never thought I'd have so much fun upholding the laws of time," he remarked with a twisted grin. "But oh, you don't do that so much anymore, do you?" he wheezed.

"What-what….I don't…" The Doctor, verbose beyond measure from what Jack had seen, seemed to be broken. Rose, who looked just as queasy at the Master's revelation, gripped the Time Lord's shoulder so tightly her knuckles were white.

"Harriet Jones," the Master said simply, and the Doctor paled. "Oh, yes, I studied Earth's history, too, though not as—cough—obsessively as you, of course. But imagine my surprise when I landed here, in what was supposed to be a golden age, only to find all the timelines had shifted out of place! Just a little, mind, but you deposing her left just enough cracks in time, left the government weak enough, that worming my way into it was child's play," he taunted.

"It...I didn't..." the Doctor faltered.

"Didn't mean to?" The Master asked with false innocence. "Oh, certainly not. All you did was bring about the creation of Torchwood and destablize the government enough that said institution could run unchecked and end this festering planet," he bit out, his words turned bitter at the end. "Only, you still seem to have a thing for preserving this hunk of rock, hm? Penance, maybe?" The Doctor scowled and looked about to say something before the Master looked over his shoulder and grinned. "Then again, you've always had a thing for the women here, too," he insinuated with a greasy leer towards Rose, who only tightened her grip on the Doctor's shoulder.

"And how's Mrs. Saxon?" Jack cut in. The Master snorted, though without much energy behind it. Even Jack could tell the alien was fading fast.

"Oh, she had her uses," he replied casually. He took a shuddering breath, and for the first time, real pain started to show in his face. The wrap and medical attention had only slowed the inevitable. Panic began to creep back into the Doctor's face, the shock from the other Time Lord's revelation fading.

"We need to get you back to the TARDIS," he muttered, but made no real move to do so. The Master sneered.

"Oh, please-wait until I'm dead at least; the literal last thing I want is to not die in your arms." The Doctor grit his teeth.

"You don't have to die-there's still time if I-" A weak snort interrupted him.

"And you call me arrogant. Just look at you-still thinking...you can save...anyone and everyone... when... most of the time..." A gurgle and a cough later, and an impressive gob of blood spouted from the dying man's mouth. The Doctor gripped the cooling hands of his fiercest friend, his dearest enemy.

"...when...it's all your..." Another cough, a wheeze, and a shuddering, final exhale. And just like that, he was gone.

o0o0o0o0o

It was still chaos in the room as UNIT finally arrived, but at the eye of the storm knelt the Doctor, his friends, and his quiet grief. It seemed ages before the Doctor did anything more than stare blank-faced at the almost-peaceful visage of the dead Time Lord, and when he did move, it was to carefully cradle the body in his arms and stand, walking towards the door without a word, his pace glacial compared to his normal long-legged stride.

He'd often bragged to Martha about how his "Superior Biology" allowed him to carry three times as much as a human with ease, but she didn't think she'd ever seen him carry something so heavy.

She swallowed back the bitter taste in her mouth as she watched the blonde woman who could only be the famous Rose, turn and trail after the Doctor just as silently. Before she could dwell on it any longer, however, a man in a smart looking uniform approached her.

"Excuse me, miss. Are you Martha Jones?" When she nodded, he continued. "I'm with UNIT and we've been told you're a companion of the Doctor. Would you mind answering a few questions about what happened here today?"

o0o0o0o0o

AN: Again, I'm so sorry it's taken this long to get this out. I lost inspiration and interest for a while, but it's back for now, so I'll try to get some more chapters out soon!