So, I finally found some of my friggin'-fraggin' notes. Not the ones I wanted, but I've filled in some blanks. Enjoy, my lovelies!

Side Note: I appreciate that my version of Rory takes no shit.

Side Note 2: Yes, I decided to start my return to this story with the words "At any rate…"

We're All Soldiers Now

i

At any rate," the Master continued, jolly as ever, "I am glad that you brought along some companions on this little field trip."

The Doctor felt limp against his restraints. How could he get everyone out alive? How could he save Rose? This was potentially one of the worst situations he'd found himself in since…well, in a great long while. "And why is that?" he responded tiredly, mind racing to find a solution.

The Master stopped pacing and stood gleefully before Dean Winchester. Dean's eyes were perplexed. He didn't even know this guy. "Because you always have a way of being honest with them in the end." The Doctor wanted to scream but there wasn't anything to be done; the Master put his fingertips against Dean's temples and both men's eyes shut.

Castiel shouted, loudly—and neither Bobby nor Sam had ever heard him make such a pained and rage-driven sound. He strained against his binds and his face—if only for that one moment—seemed eerily human.

The Doctor was begging. He wasn't sure what he was saying but he was trying to say anything, anything at all, that could stop this. Finally, the Master pulled away, laughing. Tears streamed down Dean's face and he breathed heavily.

"Oh, don't worry, Doctor. I wouldn't dare resort to the Final Action," he smirked, "After all, I'm not you."

"What did he do to you?" Castiel's voice was low.

"I don't know," Dean replied, still heaving for air. "It was like the past twenty-four hours just repeated in my head."

"I just got a little information is all," the Master grinned and stepped back. "Oh, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor! I can see why you were so frightened. If I want the Vortex I'll have to take it from your precious love." The term "love" was said with utter contempt. He turned to several shadows in the room. "Send the ship into the Vortex and put us in Lower Earth Orbit. I think we've now a use for the machine."

He turned and walked toward the back of the room, heels resounding against the pristine floor. The Doctor shouted after him, his eyes wide and frantic. "Please! If you do this, you'll kill her!"

The Master's voice sang out over his shoulder: "Oh, I know."

The door hissed as it shut.

ii

Several whistled bars of Auld Lang Syne echoed in the room. The binds fell off abruptly. Bodies toppled out of their upright chairs and everyone glanced around the room.

"I keep the equivalent of a universal lock pick with me at all times," the Captain answered their confusion. "It responds to my signal."

The sonic should be able to do that, the Doctor grumbled to himself, briefly considering voice-activated updates to his universal tool. As he tried to get his bearings, his eyes absentmindedly drifted upward. In doing so, they landed on the ceiling. He paused, his breath catching. The Doctor's eyes shut tightly. Of course.

Oblivious to the Doctor's change in mood, Gwen leaned her body against what only a moment before had been holding her up. She, like the other in the room, closed her eyes and groaned. "Dear God, what are we going to do?" It was the question on everyone's mind. Well, everyone it seemed but Castiel, whose eyes were burning into Dean's skull.

Eyes turned to the Doctor. How does one save Earth, the Universe, and Rose Tyler?

The Doctor paused, still staring at the ceiling.

"The power the Master was talking about is being used right now," he pointed with his index finger to the floor to emphasize his meaning, "unwittingly and without any sense of control." He looked so old, so ancient at that moment. "You need to understand. Rose Tyler isn't any ordinary girl. She swallowed the time vortex and used it to save millions of lives, then let it go. During that brief period of time, she also took millions of lives and brought one," his eyes briefly fell on the Captain, "back. I told you all that she had a name for it, for that version of herself." He sighed and tilted his head back upward, his index finger now pointing up. Everyone followed suit.

On the ceiling of the facility, in massive letters, were written the words: BAD WOLF.

"I don't know how to stop something that never really began. Rose currently is controlling all of time and space, without any understanding of what she is doing. This ship is aged—not new by any means. I don't know how to undo something like this." He seemed to lose his breath and something akin to a sob broke through his throat. "I don't know how to save her."

"Why…," Rory began and he caught himself. "Why even ask? I already know why she did it." Anger seeped into his tone as he lowered his head back to look at the Doctor with complete contempt. "She did this for you. In your name." The Doctor didn't answer. Rory shook his head. "You bloody hypocrite!" he shouted. Amy stepped forward but he shook his head at her, for once not letting her stop him. Not this time. It was his turn to have his say.

"You made her your soldier. You made her fall in love with you and then you let her become a killer—" the Doctor stepped forward as if to defend her actions but Rory wouldn't have it. "I don't care what monster she killed, even if it was an army of Daleks!" The Doctor shrugged in exasperation. Actually, he thought caustically, it was an army of Daleks, as you bloody well know… "What matters," Rory continued, "is that you made someone who would never have hurt a soul into an unparalleled weapon. That is what you are, Doctor. You are a General. Worse than that, you pretend to be a friend to people then you twist them inside-out!"

The Doctor stood there against the onslaught. He had no comeback, no defense. Rory was right.

"For heaven's sake, you made my wife believe you were her guardian angel at the age of eleven then you stood there and did nothing while our child was ripped from our hands! You sick bastard!" Amy didn't say a word. She was angry with Rory but she knew this was something he had needed to say for some time now.

"Look at you." His hands swayed up and down and the Doctor felt as if he were being stripped by Rory's acerbic gaze. "You spend all this time saving the world and jumping in and out of your little big blue box, playing cowboy. Your martyrdom is infectious. You made a soldier out of the Captain and you made a soldier out of Rose." His voice was acid, his finger pointed in condemnation. But his voice seemed to lose some of its edge near the end.

He lowered his forehead into his palm and turned to Amy, perhaps to apologize. She just smiled at him sideways, sadly, as if to say something only the two of them could interpret. And, in a moment, something changed in Rory's demeanor. His shoulders fell and he let out a deep sigh. "Who am I kidding?" Rory snorted in self-deprecation, his eyes returning to the Doctor's with almost a tinge of sympathy. "Aren't I just the same? Two thousand years standing vigil. I can blame you all I want, Doctor, for who we are, but maybe I'm wrong. All you did was show us time in a box. So maybe that's all you are in the end…the personification of infinity. You've spent all of your time ignoring the rules of nature, jumping years and decades and centuries. That's all you've become: the sum of the years. I can't rightfully blame you for who we are…" When he spoke next, it was almost too quiet to hear, accompanied by a short, humorless laugh: "It's time that ruins us."

After a long moment, he looked back up to the giant words framed on the ceiling of the ship. "Well, Doctor, I have an idea."

"And what's that, Rory?" he asked humbly.

"You say the Vortex wanted Rose, right?"

"Yes. I do believe so."

"Gwen," Rory turned to the woman in question. She raised her eyebrows. "When we were in TORCHWOOD, you said something interesting to me." Her eyebrows lowered now.

"What was that?"

"You said 'the flower will wilt without the light.'" Gwen looked even more confused.

"No—no, I didn't." Rory seemed to ponder this.

"I suppose, no, you didn't," he turned back to the Doctor, "the Vortex told me that through Gwen. That the flower will wilt without the light."

The Doctor paled. "The flower." It was a statement, devoid of emotion. Rory nodded. They both seemed to comprehend something about this term that no one else was grasping onto.

"The flower meaning Rose and the light meaning the Vortex." Sherlock interjected, translating for the others. Rory nodded.

"I think so, yes. I think that was the Vortex's way of saying the reason it is a cycle—a circle it called it—was because Rose was always meant to have the Vortex's power. That it was fate—that she was destined to burn up. Maybe, Doctor, just this once…you should recognize defeat."

If there were such a thing as a silent scream of rage, then that is what the Doctor must have emitted. His mouth was shut and his body stiff, but the energy rolling off of him as a result of this cruel statement was almost unbearably livid. Rory had just suggested that the Doctor let Rose die.

They'd already realized that the Vortex wouldn't save her—she had to initiate it and clearly, her sense of self-preservation wasn't as strong as her sense of protectiveness for those she loved. The Master's casual admittance to interrogating her had proven this.

For Rory to suggest they simply allow her to burn up under the weight of all of space and time…

"No."

He whipped out his sonic screwdriver and went back to the wall, running his fingers along it.

"We will find a way to save her. First, we need to get to her. Now, I know there is an input board somewhere in this wall…if I could just find it…" The screwdriver buzzed as the Doctor hunched and scuttled along the wall.

Amy looked at Rory like he was crazy. Did he just tell the Doctor to let his true love die? But Rory only smiled and she quickly caught on to what it was he had tried (and succeeded) to do. Sherlock walked past him in his billowing trench coat.

"I think I might have underestimated you," he murmured quietly as he passed, slowly drawling: "Bravo."

A whir from the sonic seemed to catch and rise in pitch. The wall made a hollow clunking sound from beneath the Doctor's fingertips. A small input board raised out of the wall and slid open. He grinned. "And now," he said, working on the board to pull up the ship's blueprints, "we should be able to see where to go."

"Fantastic, Doctor!" Clara said sardonically. "Now, if only we had an actual plan."

As if in answer, John suddenly seemed to have a revelation.

"You said they were necessary," he interjected, directing his attention at Amy.

Her eyebrows knit together. "Sorry, who?"

"Them," John replied, pointing at the Winchester group. The humans raised their eyebrows and the angel only stared stoically, seeming to brew.

"Yes…," Sherlock murmured. "She's leaving us clues," his hands clapped together and a wild look appeared in his eyes. "Why would they be necessary? She wants us to save her, so she's been trying to tell us how."

Sam chewed on his lip. The Doctor's eyes fell on him expectantly. "Well…I've been thinking about that." He turned to Castiel. "Cas, what exactly are demons?"

Dean looked affronted. "What kind of question is that, Sammy? Did they hit your head that hard?"

Sam shook his head, gesturing with his hands as if he were trying to puzzle something together. "I meant…in the grand scheme of the universe, how does one define a demon?"

"They are evil entities which move between the confines of Earth and Hell." Castiel's eyes didn't leave Dean as he responded.

The younger Winchester raised his eyebrows at Cas—both for his odd(er) behavior and for his answer. Sam, it seemed, wanted to make a conclusion but didn't dare speak it out loud.

"Wait," Dean said, clearly fed-up, "are you fucking telling me that these shadow bitches can be classified as demons?" Glances were exchanged around the room.

"Not quite," Castiel replied quietly. "Demons are classified as dimension-shifters with limitations. These have no such limitations."

"So, basically, they're the Rolls Royce of demons," Bobby growled. But Sam was starting to grin.

"No! No, wait, you don't get it!" He was excited, gesticulating and walking further in the circle of the group. "If they're just like demons—"

"Then they can be caught like demons," Dean finished for him, a matching grin stretching across his face.

The Captain tapped his foot, leaning against the wall on the far side of the conversation. "Alright," he scoffed. "I'll bite. How do you catch a demon?"