This new Doctor doesn't say a word, only raises the device in his hands, a gun of sorts, and runs straight towards Davros.

The man imprisoned next to me watches on in panic. "Don't!"

He doesn't get there in time. Davros raises a pointed, silver finger and a bolt of blue lighting shoots out of it, striking him in the chest. The force is enough to knock him to the ground. I gasp, my hands pressing against the barrier, trying to get to him.

"Activate holding cell."

"Doctor!" Donna cries, sprinting out of the Tardis. She snatches up the device. "I've got it, but I don't know what to do."

Another bolt of lighting hits her. She screams, flying back into a pillar of machinery across the room. "Donna! Are you all right? Donna!" the Doctor beside me shouts.

"Destroy the weapon." One of the Daleks obeys, and a ray of light hits the fallen device. It breaks apart in a cloud of smoke. "I was wrong about your warriors, Doctor. They are pathetic."

Rose looks between the two Doctors in bewilderment. "How come there's two of you?"

The other gets to his feet, shaken but very much alive. "Human biological metacrisis."

"Never mind that. Now we've got no way of stopping the Reality Bomb," mine mutters.

"Detonation in twenty rels," the Supreme Dalek's voice announces.

Sneering, Davros calls up another display, this time showing us the web of planets in the dark. They start to glow with white auras. The energy is building again. "Stand witness, Time Lord. Stand witness, humans. Your strategies have failed. Your weapons are useless. And, oh, the end of the universe has come."

"Five... four... three... two... one."

I hold my breath, waiting. The screen flickers off. An alarm sounds.

Peeking up from behind the machinery, Donna hums. "Closing all Z-Neutrino relay loops using an internalised synchronous back-feed reversal loop. That button there!"

"System in shutdown!"

"Detonation negative."

"Explain! Explain! Explain!"

Baffled, the Doctor stares at her. "Donna, you can't even change a plug."

She smirks. "D'you wanna bet, Time Boy?"

"You'll suffer for this." Before Davros can do a thing, though, electricity sparks from his own hand. He screams out in pain.

"Oh, bio-electric dampening field with a retrogressive arc inversion?"

"Exterminate her!"

The Daleks converge around her. She doesn't even seem to notice them. She just types away, pressing buttons and flipping switches. In the same instant, all of their ray guns lose aim, dropping. "Weapons non-functional."

Another flurry of words passes her lips, pure information. "Whoa! Macrotransmission of a K-filter wavelength, blocking Dalek weaponry in a self-replicating energy blindfold matrix?"

Still, the Doctor stood at my side watches on in utter confusion. "How did you work that out? You're—"

"Time Lord," the other says, a proud grin brightening his features. "Part Time Lord."

"Part human!" she cheers. "Oh, yes! That was a two-way biological metacrisis. Half Doctor, half Donna."

Realisation hits. All of those hints, those moments, they were meant for this. "The DoctorDonna. Just like the Ood said, remember? They saw it coming. The DoctorDonna!"

She smiles. "Holding cells deactivated." The lights fade. Allowing myself to breathe, I join the others. Mickey immediately brings me into a tight hug. Donna continues, "Unseal the Vault. Well, don't just stand there, you skinny boys in suits! Get to work!"

They don't need to be told twice, rushing for whatever machinery they can find. I scrutinise the new Doctor, watching the way he moves. If he is a copy of some kind, it is uncanny. He is exactly alike.

Davros frantically points the Daleks to them. "Stop them. Get them away from the controls."

"And... spin."

With the turn of a dial, the Daleks begin to drift, whirling around on the spot. "Help me! Help me!"

Jack throws an arm around mine and Martha's shoulders, laughing at the show. Donna goes for the dial again. "And... the other way."

The two Doctors join her by the controls, watching on in awe. The new version seems more proud than worried by this sudden change in personality. "What did you do?"

"Trip-stitch circuit-breaker in the psycho-kinetic threshold manipulator."

"But that's brilliant!"

My Doctor scrunches his nose and looks to his twin. "Why did we never think of that?"

"Because you two were just Time Lords, you dumbos, lacking that little bit of human, that gut instinct that comes with Planet Earth." She pauses for breath before rushing on again, "I can think of ideas you wouldn't dream of in a million years. The universe has been waiting for me! Now, let's send that trip-stitch all over the ship. Did I ever tell you? Best temp in Chiswick, hundred words per minute!"

"Ha!"

I shakily approach, unsteady on my feet. I don't know which one to look at or what to say. Donna saves me from worrying, interrupting, "Come on then, boys, we've got twenty-seven planets to send home! Activate Magnetron."

"Stop this at once!" Davros roars.

I hadn't even noticed that he had gone into the Tardis, but Jack emerges with two large guns. "Mickey!" he calls, tossing one over to him.

"You will desist!"

Mickey stops Davros before he can come any closer, the gun aimed right at his face. "Just stay where you are, mister."

The rest of us rush to help, shoving the flailing Daleks to the far reaches of the room. "And reverse," I hear Donna declare.

"Off you go, Clom."

"Adipose 3."

"Shallacatop, Pyrovillia and the Lost Moon of Poosh, sorted! Ha!"

"Ha!"

"We need more power."

Heading over, Rose jabs a thumb in the direction of the other Doctor. "Aren't you gonna tell us what's going on?"

Donna nods to my Doctor, busy messing with some wires and his sonic. "He poured his regeneration energy into his spare hand, I touched the hand, he grew out of that." Across the bulk of machines, the other Doctor flashes me a smile and a wink. "That fed back into me. But it just stayed dormant in my head till the synapses got that extra spark kicking them into life. Thank you, Davros! Part Human, part Time Lord. And I got the best bit of the Doctor. I got his mind."

Sarah Jane stares at them, trying to piece it all together. "So there's three of you?"

"Three Doctors?"

Jack closes his eyes with a smirk, "I can't tell you what I'm thinking right now."

I elbow him in the side. "Oi! If you could stop fantasising about my fiancé, that would be much appreciated."

"I think it's 'fiancés' now," he teasingly corrects.

Rose and the others look sharply to me. "I'm sorry, did you just say..."

"Later."

The Doctor rests a hand on Donna's shoulder as he says, "You're so unique the timelines were converging on you. A human with a Time Lord brain."

Davros turns to face his accomplice. "You promised me, Dalek Caan. Why did you not foresee this?"

The creature only cackles shrilly. My Doctor sighs, "Oh, I think he did. Something's been manipulating the timelines for ages, getting Donna Noble to the right place at the right time."

"This would always have happened. I only helped, Doctor."

"You betrayed the Daleks!"

Caan's eye opens wide, fixing on him. "I saw the Daleks. What we have done, throughout time and space. I saw the truth of us, Creator, and I decreed, 'No more!'"

A section of the ceiling opens up. "Heads up!" Jack aims his weapon as the Supreme Dalek descends, his red shell practically glowing in the flashing lights.

"Davros! You have betrayed us!"

He shrinks in his chair, suddenly timid, "It was Dalek Caan."

"The Vault will be purged. You will all be exterminated!"

A ray of blue energy is fired towards the controls. Then another. The other Doctor is too engrossed in his work to move. Seeing the Dalek prepare to fire again, I tackle him out of the way. We both hit the floor in a tangle.

"Like I was saying," Jack yells, raising his gun, "feel this!" The Dalek's shell erupts in fire and molten metal.

I meet the wide-eyed gaze of the man below me and smile awkwardly, breathless. "Are you all right?"

He breaks into a lopsided grin. "Brilliant." I hurriedly get off him and offer my hand to help him stand. The force of him jumping to his feet knocks me off balance, unsteady in my tall heels. I stumble and he catches me, a hand resting on my waist and the other still clutching onto mine. His eyes dart down to my lips. "Next time, though, maybe pick some better shoes."

"Always the same with you," I joke.

My Doctor ducks under the billowing smoke pouring from a section of the controls, joining us. "We've lost the Magnetron, and there's only one planet left! Oh, guess which one? But we can use the Tardis."

Seeing him disappear inside the ship, the other perches on the edge of the controls to reach the switches under an overhanging pillar. "Holding Earth stability. Maintaining atmospheric shell."

"The prophecy must complete," Dalek Caan chides.

"Don't listen to him."

"I have seen the end of everything Dalek, and you must make it happen, Doctor."

He hesitates. "He's right. 'Cause with or without a Reality Bomb, this Dalek Empire's big enough to slaughter the cosmos. They've got to be stopped."

Alarmed by his sudden anger, Donna gestures for him to stop. "Just wait for the Doctor."

"I am the Doctor," he argues. "Maximising Dalekanium feeds, blasting them back!"

All around us, the spinning Daleks combust. One by one, they shatter in fire and shrapnel.

My hand falls from his. I back away. This isn't something the Doctor would do. Not even if it was the last option; he would find another way.

The man in question appears in the doorway, alerted by the tremoring of the ship around us. "What have you done?"

"Fulfilling the prophecy."

Dust and debris rains down from above. "Do you know what you've done? Now get in the Tardis! Everyone, all of you, inside. Run! In, in, in!"

Covering my head, I rush for the doors, passing the other Doctor on the way. He ushers us all in urgently, counting to ensure none are left behind. "Sarah Jane, Rose, Martha, Jackie, Jack... Mickey!"

But my Doctor doesn't follow us in. Realising his absence, I double back, rushing for the doors. The other catches me before I can leave and holds me back. We watch as he offers a hand to the creature trapped by fallen chunks of the ceiling, doomed by the crumbling ship. "Davros, come with me," he yells over the chaos. "I promise I can save you!"

"Never forget, Doctor. You did this! I name you, forever, you are Destroyer of Worlds!"

Past the flames and ash, a single, yellow eye fixes on me. "One will still die."

"Doctor!" I desperately cry, reaching for him. He has to give up. Taking my waiting hand, he races to the console. "And off we go."

He pushes the throttle and we take off. From the other side of the console, Sarah Jane's eyes widen. "But what about the Earth? It's stuck in the wrong part of space."

"I'm on it," he says, bending to get a look at the screen. "Torchwood Hub, this is the Doctor. Are you receiving me?"

"Loud and clear. Is Jack there?" Gwen responds.

"Can't get rid of him." He pauses, and he and Rose lean closer to get a look at her face. "Jack, what's her name?"

"Gwen Cooper."

Nodding, he squints a little at her. "Tell me, Gwen Cooper, are you from an old Cardiff family?"

She frowns and looks to me questioningly over his shoulder. I shrug. "Yes... all the way back to the 1800s."

He and Rose share a knowing look. "Thought so. Spatial genetic multiplicity, funny old world. Now, Torchwood, I want you to open that Rift Manipulator. Send all the power to me."

Ianto's face leans into view for just a second. "Doing it now, sir."

"What's that for?" Gwen asks.

"It's a tow-rope. Sarah, what was your son's name?"

"Luke. He's called Luke. And the computer's called Mr Smith."

He pushes some more buttons. "Calling Luke and Mr Smith, this is the Doctor. Come on, Luke, shake a leg!"

Another window pops up on the screen and the boy appears. "Is Mum there?"

Her cheers of relief prompt a smile from him. "Oh, she's fine and dandy. Now, Mr Smith, I want you to harness the Rift Power and loop it around the Tardis, you got that?"

"I regret," a robotic voice says, "I will need remote access to Tardis basecode numerals."

"Oh, blimey, that's gonna take a while."

"No, let me!" Gasping, Sarah Jane races around to join us. "K9, out you come!"

The dog materialises beside Luke. "Affirmative, mistress."

"Oh, good dog! K9, give Mr Smith the basecode."

He rolls towards the computer, a little antenna protruding from the middle of his metal forehead. "Master. Tardis basecode now being transferred. The process is simple!"

The console beeps softly, confirming. "Now then, you lot." The Doctor guides her back to where she had stood, putting her hand on a small button. "Sarah, hold that down. Mickey, you hold that. D'you know why this Tardis always rattles about? Rose, that, there." Guiding her to another button, he continues. "It's designed to have six pilots. I do it single-handed!"

"Do you, now?" I tease.

Rolling his eyes, he takes my hand and moves it to a dial in front of me. "Keep that level, darling."

I feel my cheeks flush. My eyes land on the other Doctor, who watches our interaction closely. His expression is unreadable but I see the corner of his lips twitch into a faint smile. I respond with one of my own.

"And Martha, that one, too. But not anymore! Jack, there you go, steady that. Now we can fly this thing—" There's only one of us left. He pauses, grimacing. "No, Jackie. No, no. Not you. Don't touch anything. Just—" he awkwardly pats her shoulder "—stand back."

With that, he is ready.

"...like it's meant to be flown! We've got the Torchwood Rift looped around the Tardis by Mr Smith, and we're gonna fly Planet Earth back home. Right, then. Off we go!"

We fly off, the planet in tow. I take a moment to look around, seeing everyone together. It feels right, like this is how it's always meant to be.

We find each other again. The Doctor stops by my side. Continuing to pilot us back, he rests a hand on my lower back. I move in closer. "I meant it, you really are fantastic."

Chuckling to himself, he dips his head to plant a soft kiss on my cheek. "After this, yeah?"

I don't understand at first. Then it hits me. Gasping, I lean back enough to properly meet his gaze. "Wait, are you saying..."

"Once this is all sorted, I reckon it's about time for Inara and the Doctor's next big adventure. What do you say, fiancée?"

The stupid rhyme and the voice he puts on for it is only more endearing. Warmth bursts from my heart, too much to contain. In my excitement, I let out a shrill squeak and completely forget about the dial, throwing my arms around him. He hastily takes over my job and hugs me back singlehandedly. Almost all of his weight is against me, and mine on him, in an embrace of pure relief. Childish giggles leave the both of us and I move back enough to return to the dial and kiss his cheek. "I say yes. Definitely. Absolutely. A hundred, thousand, million per cent!" I promise, biting my lip to stop myself from laughing again at the sheer thrill of it all.

Over his shoulder, I see Donna and the other Doctor leaning against one of the pillars. I don't know how long he has been watching us, nor do I know what he's thinking. Suddenly, I feel less sure of myself. He is also the Doctor, after all. Things aren't as simple as they once were.

And then we're back. The Earth returns to its coordinates. It's over.

Cheers break out across the console. We're all laughing, hugging, high off adrenaline. Jackie gives me a bear hug strong enough to almost lift me off my feet despite our drastic height difference, then Rose next, and Mickey. I see Donna practically throw Sarah Jane off of Jack to get a hug from him herself.

——————

All is well back on Earth. We step out into a park thronging with people, kids playing and friends reuniting. Church bells ring incessantly in the distance.

While the Doctor and Sarah Jane say their goodbyes, I wait by the console, my gaze fixed forlornly on the Coin. A shadow falls over me as someone joins me. "You never said. All those years searching for it and you didn't say a word. Why?"

I look over at Jack, sighing, "Because I can't use it."

His brow furrows. Shifting close, he glances over at it. "What do you mean, 'can't'? You're not giving up."

"I have to."

"Why?"

Growing sick of the questions, I shut my eyes tight and force out a response, "Because if I do, a lot of people are going to die."

He just stares at me, then. It makes no sense to him.

I take his hand in mine, squeeze it, and explain, "I told you I met River. Well, she knew about the Coin and she told me what would happen. It has a price, the equal of whatever is taken. If I save a life, I have to give one in return. And if I save a whole planet..."

"Another one has to die," he realises. "That's— God, that's so unfair."

"No, it isn't."

At my quiet response, his outrage only worsens. "Are you kidding me?" he scoffs. "You spend most of your life looking for this thing, expecting it to work and, what, it's got fine print all of a sudden? You've been totally screwed over! Why am I the one who's angry about this?"

I shrug helplessly. "Because it makes sense. The Gods don't just give us whatever we ask for. That's why prayer is so much more than a bunch of requests, you have to offer sacrifices in return. That's just how it works. If mortals had the ability to just raise planets from the dead without any cost, what would make us any different from the Gods, why would we need them?"

"You don't need them!" he protests indignantly. "You are Inara godsdamn Luscinia, you don't need anyone."

"Jack—"

"You can figure it out, I know you can. You just—"

"Jack!" I finally snap. Wincing, I turn to face him and place a hand on his shoulder. It takes everything I have not to cry. "It's over. I lost too much of my life, too much of myself trying to save something that could never be saved. If today has taught me anything, it's that there are some things you just can't change; fate is a powerful thing. I have to move on now."

He doesn't want to accept it, but there's nothing else to do. Nodding reluctantly, he glances back to the Coin once again. "What are you gonna do with it?"

Pursing my lips, I think it over. "Keep it contained," I decide. "Maybe it still has some use."

My friend raises an eyebrow. "With that kind of price? Hell no!"

"There are always some prices worth paying."

There isn't much else to say. We walk out of the Tardis arm in arm, followed closely by Martha who joins the chain, beaming up at me. "Good to see you again."

"You too. You keep being brilliant, yeah?"

"Will do."

Looking over to us, Sarah Jane steps away from the Doctor and pulls me into a hug. "It was so wonderful to see you again! Are you happy?" She cups my cheek and smiles warmly. "You look happy. You're