The Dream of Rassilon, a doctor who fanfic

The Dream of Rassilon

by misscam

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

Author's Note: Spoilers up to The End of Time p2. Many thanks to lyricalviolet for beta and falena84 for being a guinea pig.

And so it came to pass, on a new day, that the Lord President of Gallifrey would listen to his hearts and dream...

Wait.

That's not the beginning of the story. It is a story to be told also, but it requires another story first. This story, the story of the Time War and the Doctor and why he stopped dreaming.

This is a story that cannot be told without dramatis personæ.

You have to know Rassilon. All of Gallifrey does. He's a legend, a name, a history, a Time Lord to define the term and most do not know him at all because they are so sure they do and thus do not look at all.

Perhaps even Rassilon does not know himself anymore.

We could ask you to be get to know the Doctor, but it would take you a lifetime. He's had already had several and more still waits. A passing acquaintance, then. This is the Doctor, last of the Time Lords, survivor, fighter, coward, rebel, ghost, legend, lover, nightmare, savior, Doctor.

He would be pleased to meet you too.

We'd like you to get to know to Rose Tyler.

Twenty-three years before this, Pete and Jackie Tyler had a girl. They did love each other, did love her, but like in every tale but fairy tales, that wasn't enough to make it perfect. It never is.

Pete died. Jackie raised little Rose on fairy tales and guts in a world short of the first and in need of the second. Little Rose became young Rose, young Rose became heartbroken Rose, became bored Rose, became working Rose, became Mickey's Rose.

Became the Doctor's Rose.

Rose met the Doctor and life changed. It often does around him (sometimes it even changes to death), but in her case even more so. Come with, he invited, grinning madness in a leather jacket. Come with.

That was definitely a sort of start. It also had an end, a beach in a parallel Norway and a parallel Doctor, but we will get to that.

Best get introduced to Martha Jones, too. Once, she was to become a doctor and save people with medicine. She learned to save people with courage instead, to live a year no one else would ever remember to save the Earth.

Martha Jones became a hero. It's an easy habit to acquire around the Doctor and a hard one to let go.

She fell in love too, once with an alien, twice to a human and third to Mickey Smith, who had helped saved the world with an unlikely yellow truck. He too, could not shake a habit.

They would get married, but we will get to that.

It would be a pleasure to introduce Donna Noble properly, once the most important human in history. But she cannot take her full role; it would kill her and the Doctor is notoriously stubborn about death. Even if it takes the destruction of personality, he is determined to live. It is how he lives himself, after all.

But he can carry the memories with him; Donna can not.

And then there is the Master. Like the Doctor, he would take a lifetime, and take it happily too. Don't let him.

So, we may begin.

Once upon a time, there was...

No.

'Once upon a time' is a human beginning. Something humans tell each other. As they would, living upon time, rather than in it. Knowing only the path of past to present to future. Knowing only the time they have, and having crystal balls and fairy tales to tell what was ahead, and history to tell what had gone before.

But history is still story, and stories can be told in many ways. This isn't a human story. It's just a story that involves humans, but most of all Time Lords.

Once in time, there was...

No.

'Once' only works if there's an definite end and beginning. Time creates both, but still yields to neither. In all there is, there is no once. There is no twice, even if time sometimes is almost a mirror and what was can reflect in what will be. There is just time, ever going on. Stories never really end. They just change into new ones.

In time, there was...

No. 'Was' is past tense and this didn't really happen in the past. In the past of those who lived through it, yes, but also in the future of those who came before. Past and and future is all perspective from where you stand. Present always changes, but it always is.

Present, then.

In time, there is...

Yes.

In time, there is her - and those who ride with her. A little Time Lord called the Doctor, usually with a little human or two for company, but not this particular time. A little Time Lord and the destination of a little planet he came from, where a little war has long since grown to a large hell...

Here, the story changes.

Gallifrey must fall. Gallifrey must fall. Gallifrey must fall.

If the Doctor repeats it enough, maybe it will become a mantra. Maybe it will stop feeling like his hearts falling as well, every time he thinks it.

Gallifrey must fall. Gallifrey must fall. Gallifrey must fall.

If he repeats it enough, maybe he can finally cause it.

"Doctor!" Rassilon calls from the intercom, as he's been increasingly trying to do ever since he's become aware of what the Doctor is about to do. "Doctor, this is not you."

"This is not you either," the Doctor says. It really is not. Not the Rassilon the Time Lords revere, but then, the Time Lords are not what they were anymore either.

Gallifrey must fall. Gallifrey must fall. Gallifrey must fall.

"I am what I must be!" Rassilon replies. "What you made me when you woke me to war. I used to have so much mercy. I'm so old now."

"Maybe we're all too old," the Doctor says. If he closes his eyes, he can still see all of his years. Maybe they are many enough.

Gallifrey must fall. Gallifrey must fall. Gallifrey must fall.

"Gallifrey must not fall," Rassilon says, but the Doctor can hardly hear him anymore. He can hardly hear anything except the beating of his hearts and three little words.

Gallifrey must fall.

"Doctor! This is genocide!" Rassilon exclaims, and the desperation in his voice is almost painful.

"Yes," the Doctor agrees, equally pained.

It is. Gallifrey must fall; Gallifrey will fall. Now, with this moment.

The TARDIS screams as the time vortex does, all of time howling as the time lock begins to fasten. He doesn't want to look, but he can't look away either, the sight burning itself into his mind. Gallifrey falls.

Then there is silence.

Gallifrey has fallen; he could repeat it to infinity and it still wouldn't hurt less, he finds.

And so it came to pass, on the last day, that the Time Lord race ceased to exist. This day was the day upon the whole of time would change forever. This was the day the Time Lords disappeared.

All but one, he believed.

He's not sure for how long he falls. Maybe it's a century, maybe it's a heartbeat, maybe it's the lifetime of a star. He cannot tell, as time itself is falling for a moment also.

It does end, though, the TARDIS crashing onto a planet and a time like a falling star, burning as it goes. The sky, the ground, him. All he can feel are flames and smoke, and a sickening smell of burnt flesh.

For a brief second he wishes he was human. A human would die from this. A human would end.

He is Time Lord and regenerates, screaming into the TARDIS as he does.

The only thing he can hear afterwards are his own heartbeats, loud like drums.

He never wanted to come.

When the war became desperate and they called for even him, the Doctor, the rebel, he wanted to run as far as he could – to the end of the universe and hide there, even from himself if he had to.

He didn't.

He didn't have the courage to.

He stands for the longest time watching the sky with his new eyes and new leather jacket he picked merely because it fills his nostril with the smell of something besides burning. He knows all the stars, all their planets, all their time from birth to death, all their lives.

They will live them now. No end of time, no end of creating, no end to cause and effect.

No Time Lords, except him, and he was never good at it.

For Gallifrey, Rassilon would keep saying as the war continued. For Gallifrey.

For the universe, the Doctor kept thinking.

For the preservation of time.

Maybe he was the only Time Lord of them in the end.

There is a memory he keeps having as he repairs the TARDIS. It's on Gallifrey, red skies above and red dust around and his mother's red robe, making her skin seem even paler.

"I'm not a soldier," he said.

"Exactly," she agreed. "This war has made soldiers of us. All but you."

She didn't say anything else, but he wonders if she knew even then what he would do.

There is never any question in him what he should do next.

He's always had companions. Susan was the first and he was grandfather as much as the Doctor then, so young and all of his regenerations to come. Susan's teachers were the first accidental, starting a habit of many lifetimes.

Barbara and Ian. He never wonders how they are doing; he knows they are highly capable and have made a great life for themselves. He knows; he never looks them up to see. Not any of them.

He has enough dreams of death, he doesn't need to see it do its slow work on them too.

There is a memory he tries to forget.

"We shall ascend!" Rassilon cried. "We are Time Lords; we shall not die. Hear me, Gallifrey! Long I have dreamed, now I have seen! We shall ascend! For Gallifrey! The Final Sanction!"

It was then the Doctor knew his own people had to die.

He hasn't slept since.

The Doctor saves Rose and Rose saves him, and he can feel her pulse through his palm whenever he takes her hand.

Humans have such a lonely heartbeat of one, but he has too much silence. Any noise will do.

"No, honest! There is a planet where all human fairy tales are true," the Doctor says, but Rose just laughs.

"You're so full of it!"

"Yes, I am and it's all impressive."

She giggles, then seems to consider his words. "So really, we could meet Red Riding Hood?"

"Yeah. Unless you prefer the bad wolf."

She makes a slight face. "How about Sleeping Beauty? Did she really prick her finger on a spinning needle?"

"Slept for a thousand years," he says lightly.

"Do you think she dreamt?"

"I hope she didn't," he says, not really looking at her. "Not all dreams are good, Rose."

Just before the end Rassilon sought him out, and they walked together under the glass dome and watched the sky burn above.

"They tell me a lot about you, Doctor."

"They've always said a lot about you, Rassilon."

The Lord President nodded, pausing in his step to lift his staff at the sky.

"We're losing this war, Doctor."

"I know."

"And yet, you do not believe in my proclamation."

"I don't believe being a Time Lord gives us the right to end it."

"Who else but us would have that right? Free of cause and effect. You would like it too, Doctor. You already avoid what you cause, you do not stay to see the effects. You would like it very much."

"Perhaps I would," the Doctor agreed.

It's strange how much harder it is to be a killer the second time.

Or maybe it isn't. The first time he didn't know how it would feel, didn't know all would bring with it after. Now he knows. Now he can't kill again.

Now he can let the Daleks live and the last of the Time Lords die.

Rose and the TARDIS has different ideas.

He always thought he would die with Gallifrey.

That was always the intention, from the moment he knew he had to stop his people and to the moment he got the help he needed to set-up the Time Lock.

Except the person who helped him had other plans.

He isn't sure he's forgiven Romana yet.

Rose can't die for him; he would rather kiss all of time from her than see her die.

A life for a life; it's surprisingly easy to do, considering the alternative.

The message Romana left for him got destroyed in the crash after, but it never mattered. He learned it by heart the first time he heard it.

No apologies for ensuring his survival. No regrets for what had been. No explanations for why she could not come with him. No declarations of love.

Just one wish.

'Have a good life, Doctor.'

A good life.

A new body, same old TARDIS, same but growing Rose, all of time and place to visit. Some might call that a good life. He certainly aspires to, as much as he can and with all the lightness he can muster.

A good life.

He'd like to have one forever.

He does wish he'd never asked Romana's help. He tries not to remember it, as if that itself would erase it from history now that he is the only one who could possibly remember.

"End time!" he told her. "They've all gone mad. This isn't a dream, Romana. This is a nightmare."

"This is what we have caused," she said and her eyes burned like ice.

"I have to stop them."

"Of course you do," she said, soft as dew, but her kiss was all hard edges and force.

He only understood later it was a goodbye.

Humans can't stay with him forever. They might promise, but time will break it for them if nothing else.

Norway is breaking Rose's, and her heart with it.

He never knew how to say goodbye to Susan.

So he didn't.

"Grandfather," she said the last time he saw her, and he merely held her, the burning remains of a Dalek fleet falling around them.

He didn't let go for a long time.

Martha.

He lies a lot to Martha.

About one trip only, about why he is alone, about why he'd like her around, about Gallifrey having fallen. Because he likes to, because lying lets him rearrange how he likes the universe to be, just for a bit.

It's a bit like dreaming with both eyes open.

Martha looks and Martha challenges and in the end, Martha gets a story.

"Ah, you should have seen it, that old planet," he tells Martha, and she listens to his descriptions of Gallifrey with a bit of awe and a lot of patience.

Gallifrey, as it looked in the light of two suns, in his childhood and untarnished memories.

He doesn't describe to her how Gallifrey looked in the final days.

He saw Gallifrey fall, every detail of it; if he closed his eyes he could imagine his people dying as it did.

For a long time after, he didn't even blink.

"Don't blink!" he tells Martha; she thinks he's completely bonkers.

At least until she sees her first weeping angel.

Once, as a young boy, he got caught making mischief with a fellow boy and called into a study where his father would look sternly at him.

"You two again. So different. So alike. Both trying to be what a Time Lord is not," his father said.

They stopped being boys, both the Doctor and the Master.

The rest might not have changed so much.

They're alike now, the Doctor and the Master.

Survivors. Last of their kind. Non-conformers, at opposite sides often enough to make it into a sort of bond. A shared heartbeat, shared memories.

Enough to build a shared life on, for the Doctor.

Not for the Master.

"You are a Time Lord," his father always told him. Also on the day he returned to Gallifrey and a war in progress.

"You are a Time Lord! The Daleks threaten the very creation, they must be fought. You know this."

"I am the Doctor."

"Even you must see the Daleks have gone too far. The nightmare they are unleashing upon the universe... The Daleks are a disease, you may help cure it. You've spared them before, you cannot now. No second chances. We must be that sort of a race this time."

"We're always that sort," the Doctor said grimly.

Donna gets her second chance.

After turning him down the first time, she comes with him on the second and she's brilliant. She is learning and changing and becoming and he enjoys it, all the humanity so bright in her.

Until Time Lord shines with it, and that's a fire no human brain can contain, no matter how beautiful it looks.

"I want you to see," Rassilon told him under the burnt sky of Gallifrey. Above them, one sun was setting. "Will you let me, Doctor?"

The Doctor nodded, moments later feeling fingers at his temples and the Lord President's mind in his, so very, very bright.

The dream of Rassilon in the Doctor's mind.

He hasn't forgotten what he saw.

Bright and beautiful, and a fire no universe can contain.

"You know what I'm going to do," the Doctor tells his half-human clone as everyone else is talking too much between themselves and syaing goodbye to listen "Make it a good life for her."

They both watch Rose, who is hugging Mickey tenderly.

"You could too, you know. But you'd have to see her age and die, wouldn't you? You'd have to see her die, no guarantee you'd die first."

"You know me. Always the coward," the Doctor says lightly.

"Always the coward," his other agrees.

The first time the Doctor knew he was a coward was when he saw the Untempered Schism and ran.

He's reaffirmed it often enough since then.

Davros with his children burning.

Rose with a half-human Doctor, Jackie with Pete again, Jack with his team waiting, Martha and Mickey with a shared future, and Donna, Donna with memories no longer.

The Doctor with no one.

Not fair, maybe not any of it, but the universe rarely does fair at all

He lied a lot to his fellow Time Lords, and he didn't break the habit even in the last days.

"You will ascend with us, then," Rassilon said. "You have seen Gallifrey's rise. Her children's rise."

"I would not dare to stand in the way of Gallifrey's rise," the Doctor said, looking at the sky a bit distantly.

"You know one thing they say about you, Doctor? 'Always the coward', they say."

"So they do."

"I'm not sure they're right," Rassilon said, and walked away.

This was not really the end of the story. The Doctor and Rassilon would meet again, and the Doctor would once again reject Rassilon's dream and let Gallifrey fall.

The Master would learn that heartbeats can sound like drums. Donna would learn nothing, and the Doctor would give a life for a life and start a new one.

That's not the end either.

In another dimension, the (sort of) human Doctor awakens sharply.

"What is it?" Rose murmurs sleepily from beside him, but without much alarm. This isn't the first time.

"I had a dream," he says.

"We established that humans have them," she says dryly. "Remember the first time? You dreamt about playing football on skis and made us all try it. Even mum and dad. At four a.m."

"Yes," he says fondly. "Your mother hit me with a ball. Do we still have that?"

"No, we used it to defeat that galock."

"Oh," he mutters, settling down next to her and feeling her hand come to rest on his chest. "Rose? Do you ever dream of heartbeats?"

"That was your dream? Heartbeats? It's probably just your own."

"No," he says distantly, watching the ceiling as Rose's breathing steadies beside him. He's only got one heart, one heartbeat. Like a human. One, two. One, two. This was another rhythm. This was like drums. "It was a Time Lord's."

He will have the dream again the next night.

And far away, in a war locked in and from time, Rassilon smiles.

For so it came to pass again, on the last day of Gallifrey, that the Time Lord race did cease to exist. This day was the day upon the whole of time would change forever. This was the day the Time Lords were to disappear.

This was the day that the Lord President of Gallifrey would listen to his hearts and dream again.

The Master wasn't the only mind he might touch, or the only link he might make. There is at least one other.

Stories never really end. They just change into new ones.

Here, this story changes.

Here, another one will start.

FIN