NCJDDAS: Fifty/Fifty - Part Two
NCJDDAS: Fifty/Fifty - Part Two
Starring Brenda Blethyn and Dame Judi Dench
Featuring Ted Danson, Stevie Nicks, Linda Hamilton, Alison Pill, Martin Freeman, Sean Carlsen and Sir Ian McKellen
Chapter Eleven
"Well," began Millie, and she fell into the dirt. "Ah, shit!" She groaned. "Body's not used to being solid! Owch! Ow, Ow, Ow!"
Tolos looked on, confused. "Are you a god?" He asked. "How have you come from nowhere?"
"Well, Tolos, my buddy, pal, old friend, it just so happens that it has to do with you." Millie said, smiling, and getting up from the dirt. "You see, I have a job from the Doctor."
"Which Doctor?" Tolos hissed, gripping the spearhead in his back pocket.
Millie's eyes glowed slightly, as if it was an irritation to ask. "Aw, gee, I wonder. The one that's gonna murder you, or the one that wants everyone not to be murdered by the other one. Wow, that's a question to ponder." She groaned sarcastically.
"You saved me, and for that you have my thanks," Tolos replied. "But I have no interest in your war. You will leave me alone." He insisted, turning to go.
"Funny, that. Quite a turnaround from 'Wow, Millie, are you a god?"' She remarked. "I just saved you from that lady with the flintlock, and you're just like 'Well that's cool, bye.' It's rather presumptuous, not to mention irritating."
Tolos looked at Millie once more. "It is three hours until nightfall. Upon nightfall, the hunter arachnid will rise from the sewers to deal with any prey that still roam the streets. This is not war, this is erasure. I want to survive. I do not want to fight your fight."
"Don't you remember the Doctor?" Millie asked. "She asked you to remember you."
Tolos thought back to when he was a child. He had blocked the memory - almost as if the audience wasn't supposed to make the connection until this point - of the Doctor leading him and four other children away from a bomb shelter that would have exploded.
"Where are the other children, Tolos?" Millie asked. "We need to find them." She said with steely determination. That's not to say that her determination was made out of steel. It could have been made out of another really strong metal of some kind. Like bronze. We don't want to narrow things down here. Tolos looked back at Millie, and yes, he saw that determined face, and he nodded.
"I do not know." He said. "One of them died a few years later - I assume the other four are still alive."
"Well, that's good." Millie said. "Because you're going to help me find them."
* * *
The Time Lords of Gallifrey were dead, all but Six. One was the Doctor. One was the other Doctor. One was Roman. And the other three, were in the remnants of the capital, beneath it all, deep in the rubble strewn Cloisters.
Narvin stroked his beard thoughtfully, as the irritation of the day's occurrences filled his bones. He and his two accomplices had managed to find themselves entombed in the shafts of the capital's deepest Cloisters, where even the Wraiths did not dare to travel. The city above was burnt, and dead.
Time was equally so. Such was a recent development. Perhaps it was not such as burnt - the innate sense of what time is that all time lords have, was giving Narvin a blazing headache- but perhaps that was the word. Blazing. Time was not dead and burnt, like everything else - Time was dead, and it's corpse was still ablaze with flame. The near loss of the sense of time was something quite devillish. He would not get any feeling whatsoever, and then a sharp pang- like a pinch right on the top of his cerebellum.
The other two time lords were in worse moods. Most Time Lords were bureaucrats. Even Narvin occasionally qualified as such. But there were those Time Lords and Ladies that dedicated themselves to that craft to the ailment of anything else. This dreaded breed was the Time Lord Politician, and it had bred such fine examples of society such as Livia or even The Eleven, before he went overboard on the whole "I'm fucking insane" thing.
Sardonia and Ralus were two rotten politicians, and perhaps, just perhaps, they were the sole survivors of the Gallifreyan race.
The idea scared Narvin quite a bit.
What would be more frightening, would be the class 12 temporal annihilation class missile with a photonic yield that was heading directly towards his bunker.
"4 minutes until impact," Ralus intoned.
"Damn. Too little time to activate the Capital's Deflector Array." Sardonia growled. "Is she the one responsible for this?"
"The Doctor?" Narvin asked to confirm. "Oh, I have no doubts."
"A missile though? Is it really her style?" Ralus questioned.
"Oh, that's very "in" with her particular incarnation, rest assured." Narvin hissed. "Well, do you have any last wishes before we die a painful and inevitable death?"
"Mummy?" Sardonia whimpered.
"You don't have a mummy, we're fucking Loomed." Ralus replied.
"MUMMMYYY!!!" Sardonia bawled.
"Oh, founders preserve us," Narvin muttered.
They didn't.
Chapter Thirteen
With the missile hitting the bunker and turning the three surviving Gallifreyan's to finely tuned shish-kebab, the Dench Doctor reclined into her chair. A job well done. She had questioned whether a drone guided missile without any time travel capabilities would hit so precise a target, but evidently it had. I guess that was the power of Drones. Someday they would own everything or something, and then Vending Machines would become the dominant race across the cosmos or something.
"Well. That does it." She said. "I now have literally one opponent to play with. The rest are dead, or in that hamster cage over there."
In a hamster cage nearby, Fenric and Sutekh shook, trying to get any room whatsoever in the six inch space.
"Victory." The Dench Doctor sighed. "...Victory."
"Hi, um, Doctor. I'm terribly, um, sorry to intrude-" Todd began, despite not having intruded and having stood right there the entire time.
"Oh, hi, Todd." She said mildly.
"But, um, you still haven't fixed the time travel issue. That there's no time travel." He remarked.
"Well, you're right, that is mildly concerning. And I do want uninhibited vortex travel back... so I can track down the other me and well, I don't know, retcon them? Yeah, that's what I'll do. Retcon them. With a crowbar. To the face." The probably not even the Doctor anymore at this point mused.
Todd made a noise that was almost a gulp but came out more like "oip"
Roman meanwhile, was biding his time. Any instant betrayal of the Doctor would make her take control of him again with those weird space powers of hers. And after all, the mind control had taken quite a long time to break. What to do? He quietly considered.
"Roman, more tea."
Roman begrudingly moved over with a cup to prove to try and prove to her the mind control was still working.
"What the fuck is this?" The Doctor said, looking at the tea. "I see no Lucky Charms marshmellows in my tea roman."
Oh damn. Now he had done it.
* * *
There are three rules for travelling through the time vortex.
1. If time is broken, don't do it
2. If time is broken, don't do it
and 3. Be careful to not spill your coffee on the TARDIS console
The Blethyn Doctor was about to break all three.
"What!?!? What are we doing??!!"
"75% Chance of Instant Death," The Blethyn Doctor insisted. "Time travel without a vortex!"
"That's scientifically impossible." Lottie said.
"You would think, yeah, but I was there when Omega and Rassilon first started on those jolly old equations. So I know a thing or two, cos I was like there and made time travel and stuff." The Doctor said.
"No, you didn't." Lottie replied.
"We had a looms shout-out a few lines ago, I'm fairly certain I can wrangle something up." The Doctor said. '75% Chance of Instant Death, say WHEEEE!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
Chapter Fourteen
"25% Chance of Survival!" The Doctor said, happily skipping out of the TARDIS.
"What's with you?"
"A bit high off of regeneration stuff. Still metabolizing the previous personality. Gimme a sec-"
The Doctor sneezed out golden dust. "Okay! That's better!"
"Where are we?" Lottie asked.
"The planet Xerox." The Doctor said. "And hopefully my best backup plan in an age."
* * *
Sarah Connor and Calvin were still hanggliding through the nothing of the nothing vortex, when suddenly they fell out into normal space.
"What?" said Calvin, beginning to choke despite still not being solid for some reason.
Sarah Connor, being an 80s action hero could breathe in space perfectly well.
These things definitely make sense.
"What's happened?" Calvin choked out.
"There's evidently no more time vortex at all. Not even a nothing vortex like the one we were trapped, in, someone must have broken it more by doing something incredibly stupid." Sarah Connor said.
Calvin looked at her blankly.
"Don't look at me like that! There's no one else in the scene to spout technobabble, and I actually know a lot about time travel! It involves nudity!"
Calvin sighed. Ah, the 80s. He did not miss them. Well, he tried to sigh, but then he fell unconcious, because he was in fucking space.
* * *
Plop, went the TARDIS.
"We're no longer trapped in the time vortex!" Todd exclaimed. "What the hell is going on?"
"Other me broke it yet again. Smart her. Well, now that we're outside the vortex we still have space travel. Or, well, manual flight." The Doctor grumbled. "Let's hope she's in this time period, and get after her."
Roman sighed. Thank god the TARDIS had gone plop out of the vortex at a convenient time, his cover was just about to be blown.
The TARDIS's rarely used ginormous fucking jet engines roared to life.
"SPACE TRAVEL!" The Doctor screamed happily.
Five seconds passed.
"I'm bored," The Doctor muttered. "Somebody make me a martini."
* * *
Mirya examined the dirt. She did so because she had been knocked unconscious and deposited on said dirt, and therefore was wondering what she should do before she got up. In case the people who knocked her out were still nearby. So she examined the rock and dirt with one eye, playing like she was dead. She listened intently out for anyone nearby who could be said psychopathic killers.
She took a moment, and then reasserted herself, assured that there were no Murderous people nearby, and she drew herself up to full height, that of an short woman who never had the growth spurt she was promised.
She was still young - or she would be if the people on this planet didn’t have a life expectancy of 30. War did that.
She examined (for that was what she tended to do, why stop herself now) her surroundings, noticing a unique pair of florescent fungi she had never noticed on Xerox before. Either rare - like most vegetation, or she was in a different situation than she had thought. But this was only considered for a moment, until she turned and saw a familiar blue box.
“Nice to see you again, Mirya,” said The Blethyn Doctor, walking up to her. “It’s been a while.”
“Doctor??”
* * *
Xerox. All paths diverged to this useless planet, a meaningless hunk of rock, and yet the hope of the future. The last Human colonists in the universe.
The Dench Doctor looked at the planet from orbit. The TARDIS doors open, as she glared down at her last obstacle.
“The last people,” Todd said, “Surely, I mean, you don’t intend to wipe them out?”
“I don’t know!” The Dench Doctor worried. “I mean, I’ve been thinking about all of this - I want to still exist, that’s all I want, but, I mean, is it worth all this carnage?”
A whispering in the back of her skull.
“Of course it is,” The familiar voice ranted. “All of this has been in the search of the ultimate power! Whether you accept it or not, you are the villain now! This is the world you have created, Doctor, accept your role or you will be destroyed! At the end of the story, no one bemoans the villain’s death!”
“Uh, Doctor?” Todd asked. “I’m not sure I’m okay with this. I mean! I’m sorry, I’ve tried to be your friend, and I’ve tried to say, and in all fairness I probably should have said twelve genocides ago, but I’m really not okay with this!”
The Doctor thought to herself. You’re the villain now. Okay.
“You want to really make my enemy, Todd?”
And Todd’s lip trembled, and he apologized frantically. “No! Sorry! I didn’t mean any of that, no, not at all, you’re definitely the best, yeah! Sorry, I’m so sorry! Please!”
That was better. Perhaps she should put him under the mind control to be safe - and as she moved her fingers the power that she had achieved for herself was gone.
Shit. Whatever the other Doctor had done to the time vortex, it had cut off her power. Or maybe something else. Alright, fine. Her chest burned. Argh, what was that?! No matter.
So the battle was fair then. A battle of wits...
Chapter Fifteen
“Doctor, who is this?” Lottie asked.
“One of the children I saved, I think. Ooh, which one were you...” The Doctor muttered, bemused...
“One of the alive ones.” Mirya stated. “I’ve got you to thank for that. How are you alive again?”
“Younger Dench me regenerated- making older Dench me a very angry alternate timeline. If she doesn’t kill me and assert herself, she’ll fade away in a few days now.”
“So what? You hide out then. Lay low.”
“If I do that she’ll kill half the planet to get to me. No, I don’t accept that, sooner or later I’ll have to face her head on. Come on.” The Blethyn Doctor stated. “Everything is a temporal hoo-hah at the moment. We have to be careful not to step on any Butterflies or cause any more paradoxes.”
“Wait...you totally did do another paradox by regenerating and then making yourself regenerate with a whole bootstrap thing - oh my god, you’re garbage!” Lottie exclaimed.
“Other me fights dirty, I did too.” The Blethyn Doctor winked, with a devilish smirk on her grandma lips. “Come on, loves! We need to find the other children for my backup plan.”
“I...I’m not sure that many of them will be left.”
“Oh no, I’m certain at least three are alive. Possibly more. Okay, Let’s get a shift on!”
* * *
“The Doctor - both of these Doctors are excellent at two different things. After all, they’re the same genius,” Millie remarked. “But they go about in different ways - Dench is a drama Queen. She needs people to see her do everything, she demands to be noticed, bold and brash, while the other Doctor lives in the future. Well, she’s nice and quietly planning with a cup of cocoa on how to collapse the entire Dalek empire. They’re fundamental opposites. And yet...”
“This is relevant, how?” Tolos mumbled. “You are trying to distract me. You have taken me in this direction yet you have not explained why.”
“It is important,” stated Millie, not sounding entirely like herself.
Tolos quietly edged on, nervous.
“It’s been quite some time since you last saw the Doctor, yet you remember her still. You were made for a task, Tolos. The Doctor doesn’t do anything without reason.”
“The Doctor tried to save us from bombs. We were afraid children.”
“If this is what you wish to believe,” said Millie. Tolos saw the glow in her eyes again, the irritation, but he realized very quickly it wasn’t a trick of the light.
He raised his spearhead swiftly, and threw but Millie raised her hand in response and the spearhead shattered in midair with the same blue light that flowed from Millie’s eyes.
Faces shaped themselves from the nothingness, and overtook Millie’s own face. “WE ARE THE GUARDIANS,” They stated in unison. “IT IS TIME FOR THIS CHARADE TO END.”
Chapter Sixteen
Sarah Connor found herself banging into the window of a passing spaceship. She grunted.
The man flying the spaceship found the fact that instead of a viewscreen, he had Sarah Connor, incredibly annoying, because the thing is about Sarah Connor is that she is not see-through like the window that you would very much like to have while driving.
He swung his hands about emphatically and made alien noises that sounded vaguely like Italian. "Sorry," said Sarah Connor, and he would have heard too, if it wasn't for the whole no sound in space thing. (Except when it's convienient.) Sarah leaped off of the ship with some force, but she could only manage floating a few feet away.
The grumbling maintained itself.
Calvin looked bad - she tried to reach over and grab him but he was too far away. This failed on both counts, because he still wasn't solid either.
Sarah, not really sure what she could possibly do to survive, groaned. It was at this moment that without meaning to really, and by sheer accident, she stuck out her thumb.
The alien pilot of the spaceship nodded suddenly. "BRrheeueheahahaueueahehheaaa" He said, recognizing that they were in fact Hitchhikers and it was merely polite to pick them up.
He activated the tractor beam and dragged them inside.
"oooOOGOGOGOGOGOGgggOOOOoggaaa" He insisted, upon their entrance, and Sarah Connor calmly reached into her belt and attatched a grenade to the man's forehead.
Splat.
She didn't trust aliens.
"Hey, Calvin." She said, observing as the ship's tractor beam deposited him inside. He didn't react. Ah, whatever.
She looked at the controls. Huh. They had been exploded because she set off a grenade in the cockpit.
Bit dumb of her, really.
She sighed and hit the controls a bit, until they somehow blinked back to semi-life, flickering a bit.
Astonished that this had worked, she began scanning for Time Lord life-signs.
The ship then proceeded to crash onto the nearest planet.
* * *
You'd expect sheer coincidence to kick in, but it in fact, wasn't the planet Xerox.
Sarah stepped out onto the surface.
Where was she?
Wherever it was, it was on fire.
And in the wreckage, a burning man screamed, sparks flying from his face in a column of vibrating light, until his face solidified into that of a woman.
"Hey. What's going on here," Sarah said, stepping over.
"Sarah Connor -" grunted the woman. "I am Ralus."
"How do you know who I am?" Sarah Connor grunted, reaching for her gun subtly.
"Because you are the Gallifreyan High Council's Last Project," Ralus said. "We made you to kill the Doctor."
Chapter Seventeen
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that we knew that the Doctor's past life was going to wage war on the universe, and so we created you, the ideal assassin, plucked from the memories of the Doctor's dreams. It was quite difficult to do, building an artificial intelligence from memory and plucking it into an organic metal frame."
"Organic metal - are you saying what I think you're saying?"
"Of course," Ralus said. "We had to make an assassin that would not question commands, and it's very difficult to educate and indoctrinate clones correctly, so you were given a flesh android body."
"You made me, Universe's Number One Terminator hater, a fucking Terminator? I can't believe this."
"The Gallifreyan Council was nearly out of options," Ralus insisted. "And also possibly high." She handed Sarah a Time Ring. "Complete your mission, Sarah Connor." Ralus said. "You must."
Sarah examined the Ring. "You made me into the thing I hate the most." She growled. "Where are the other time lords?"
"Dead. And I have literal moments left." Ralus said.
Sarah Connor sighed. "What about Calvin? What's happened to him? Ever since he came back from the Dream Lady's Dreamscape..."
"Calvin has only hours without a body himself. I would try to take care of him, but I'm going to die in thirty seven seconds."
"Thirty-Six, Thirty-Five..." Sarah began counting sarcastically. "I'll stand here and count if you don't tell me how I can save him."
"Why do you care about a random human?"
"You know, I really don't know. Maybe because I was fucking programmed that way. Twenty Nine...Twenty Eight..."
"Stop! Stop! Fine. You can attempt to save the human as a data file, but there's little else you can do. Please accept your mission, Sarah Connor. Go to Xenox! It's all going to end if..." Ralus died mid-sentence. Hm. That was certainly less time than she had thought.
Sarah twisted the ring calmly. Fine. Let's get this over with.
She disappeared into the Vortex.
* * *
"WE ARE THE GUARDIANS." The Voices said, spraying out of Millie's body.
"I AM THE BLACK GUARDIAN." Said One.
"AND I AM THE WHITE," Said the Other.
"WE ARE THE BALANCE." They said in unison.
Tolos dropped his spearhead in shock.
Millie's face merged into two distinct halves and split until she was no longer there.
Out walked two elderly women, one in black, and the other, you guessed, in white. They wore identical robes minus the color and their birdlike headresses and the wings that were folded into their billowing dresses.
The Guardians of The Universe.
Tolos shook, and then he turned to see The Doctor, Lottie and Mirya rush in.
"Mirya? Doctor?? What is going on??" Tolos sputtered.
The Doctor gasped for breath. "Sorry! Give me a second. Ooh, it's me old bones, see..."
After catching her breath, she adjusted herself from a wheezing old woman to a wheezing old woman with a serious look on her brow. She glared at the guardians. "Well. It's you lot. I wondered what was going on here. Why the Planet Xerox...It's another one of your games, isn't it?"
The Guardians looked down at the Doctor. "Ah, Doctor." The Black Guardian said. "How perceptive you are. How excellent it is I chose you as my champion."
Chapter Eighteen
The Doctor ruffled her coat, shocked. Her hat slipped off her head and she reapplied it. "What? What?!?" She sputtered. "What?!!?"
The Other Doctor, Todd and Roman rushed in.
She sighed, aggravated, and breathed heavily. "Oh, come on." She growled. "What is this!?!?"
"Ah, my champion has arrived to face yours, Black." Said The White Guardian.
"I'm sorry - what?! You're the voice in my head from earlier! I thought that was just me being insane!" The Dench Doctor shrieked. "That should have been me going insane - What is - I -"
"My dear Doctor, you are the perfect champion for me, whether you like it or not. Your chaos begets order, my dear Doctor. The less things there are in the universe, the simpler the scale of right and wrong is." The White Guardian Whispered, wickedly. "And you have been ever so good for that purpose."
"And vice versa for you, my dear Doctor," The Black Guardian replied to The Blethyn Doctor. "Your attempts to save the universe as it was have allowed for a more complicated universe, than that simple minded past self Dictator of yours wants. Dictators want order. Destroying them causes chaos. And we Guardians are the very incarnation of Chaos and Order, not Good and Evil."
"This whole thing was an engineered war for you lot?"
"Heavens, no. Free will is what caused all of this. You two made your own choices, and now you are living with the consequences." The Black Guardian continued.
"As if we would quarrel in any other way. We need to see the universe set - one way or another. This is precisely the moment to reveal ourselves! Now, you two will fight, and you will choose. Chaos or Order for the Universe." The White Guardian said. "Whether Dangerous freedom will prevail..."
"Or Stifling Control." finished The Black Guardian, accusingly.
The Dench Doctor nodded. "Well, I'm taking this as a sign that since the White Guardian is on my side, I'm definitely the good one here."
"No, don't you get it-" The Blethyn Doctor demanded. "They aren't gods of good and evil!"
"Potato, Pot-ato," The Dench Doctor replied, taking a gun out of her purse. She raised it and fired at the Blethyn Doctor.
"Doctor, you have to understand-" The Blethyn Doctor tried, dodging desperately out of the way of the bullets. "They-"
Bang, and The Blethyn Doctor was hit, and fell back into the dirt. "It seems every time we meet it ends up like this," The Dench Doctor sighed. "Come on, get up. I know you've got more life in you."
"Excellent," hissed The White Guardian. "Control over the entire universe! Order brought to miserable chaos! Soon, all shall fall under one regime, one universal law, and I shall reign supreme!"
"Woah, are you sure you're the White..." The Dench Doctor trailed off. "Oh no."
* * *
At this moment, a certain tune began to bounce around the Dench Doctor's head from her recent Crazy Ex Girlfriend binge. A certain incredibly relevant tune -
I'm the villain in my own story. I'm the Witch in my own Tale. Although I insist, I'm the protagonist - it's clear my soul is up for sale....
"Oh, goddamn it." The Dench Doctor sighed, placing her head in her hands. She turned to the White Guardian. "You! You, when you talked to me in my head earlier, that telepathic message, you called me a villain!"
"Merely to keep you in line. As you should be now, creature." The White Guardian replied.
"No, well, I've always known you were sketchy, but that must have been a slip of the tongue, because that's important. That's incredibly important. Oh, how didn't I see it sooner!" She bit her lip. "Goddamn it, is this going to be my, like, fifth redemption arc, because: you lot!" She pointed at the Guardians. "You Lot! Neither of you are good whatsoever. You're the balance, and you forget that, and you get into little tittle tattle fights, but it's time to calm your asses down, because the Doctor is in!" She bowed, slightly mockingly. "If I wanted to control the universe, I wouldn't want total control. I wouldn't want a dictatorship, completely devoid of opponents! I'd get bored as shit! As a matter of fact, that's probably what's already happened! I got obsessive over this future me thing, and - oh my god, this is convoluted. And I wouldn't want chaos either, not pure destructive chaos. The Daleks and Cybermen are not chaos, they're order, but the Master, the Valeyard, they're chaos! So either way, I'm signing up for a party I don't wanna be in on! And Guardians, I don't wanna be in on you!"
"Oh, I get it." Lottie mused. "I mean - I couldn't choose, could I? When I was asked by future you about joining to stop you you -" She said to the Dench Doctor, "I couldn't choose between you. I said I wouldn't fight this war thing, and suddenly the Dream Lady came in and made me choose a side. The Guardians don't want that, do they?"
"Oh, Lottie, brilliant once again!" Dench shouted out.
The Blethyn Doctor groaned, still bleeding out from the gunshot.
"Oh. Oh, wait. Damn." Dench Doctor realized. She looked at the Blethyn Doctor.
"YOU HAVE ALREADY MADE YOUR CHOICE," said The Guardians.
Chapter Nineteen
Just then, Sarah Connor materialized.
She levied her gun towards the crowd. "You killed her!" She roared.
The Dench Doctor raised her hands, perturbed. "She's not dead yet! She'll get better!"
"Oh, fuck off," said Roman, sick of doing the whole pretending to be mind controlled thing and having absolutely no story relevance. He punched The Dench Doctor in the jaw, and she fell to the floor. "Alright, then!" Roman snapped. "What do you think of that, Guardians!"
And then suddenly, Sarah rushed over and pumped the Dench Doctor full of bullets.
The Guardians jittered, and disappeared.
Mirva and Tolos finally stopped shrieking hysterically about the weird god things.
Todd shrugged. "...What now?"
* * *
They started with making graves. First, one for Millie. The Guardians had discarded her body as just as callously as the Doctor had shot it in the first place.
Then, One for the Time Lords. Narvin, Ralus, Sardonia. They didn't have any bodies, The Doctor had been thorough in destroying Gallifrey. So Roman constructed a simple tombstone.
Then, One for the Doctor. They buried the two bodies together.
Then, a few days later, one for Calvin, after his body faded away.
The days passed, and the companions commiserated together, except for Sarah Connor, who was angry at herself for her actions. She hadn't meant to kill the Doctor. Something had just taken over her.
It was time lord programming.
On the dawn of the fourth day, Roman attempted to repair the TARDIS, but it didn't want to go anywhere without it's pilot.
Not as if it could, without a vortex.
Later that day, two men and a woman arrived to join Tolos and Mirva.
"We came as fast as we could," they said. The other three children. Against all odds, they had survived the war.
After a while, Roman, Todd and Lottie built a house on the outskirts of town, away from the fighting and bombs, which eventually stopped. Either the war had ended, or there were too little people left to fight it. There was nothing left to be done.
Sarah Connor never went inside. She usually sat out in the rain, hoping that she would rust. She never did.
Todd's conscience weighed heavily too, but Roman and Lottie were unusually kind and understanding. He had gone along with the Doctor on what she had done, but he still didn't know why.
And they all wondered, what in the hell, the Doctor's backup plan ever was.
* * *
"Death," Todd mused. "I mean, wasn't it so impermanent for her? I mean, she was an alien. Why hasn't she come back?"
"I mean, sort of. But she's a time lord, she sort of died all the time. It was kind of her business." Lottie said. "And she did always come back."
Roman sighed, and looked into the fireplace. "I don't hold up much hope."
Outside, on the dismal dark grey landscape, forged by war, a flower began to grow.
* * *
More than one flower would grow. The Five Children left behind, saved by the Doctor - they built onto the wreckage. They became leaders, they established governments that ruled with an open hand and nothing but peace. Eventually the whole world was green, flowery, and even later, a blue sky returned.
The Doctor's backup plan. When all else fails, save the people that will save a planet.
Start by saving one.
But no more Doctor. You can't have a Doctor without time.
Chapter Twenty
Roman walked to the usual spot, to find Lottie standing by the graves on the hill.
"I'm a temporal physicist, you know." She said. "I made a career out of time travel theory. And I actually learned some stuff from the Doctor that actually works. I keep thinking, god, we have to go back. We have to turn back the clock, make it all not happen."
"Would be a bit of a cop out." Roman muttered.
"Yeah." Lottie nodded. "But I keep trying to think of ways it would work, and it keeps not doing that all important thing, of, you know, working."
"The flowers are quite beautiful this time of year." Roman mused.
"I know you're trying to distract me, Roman. But I can't give up. I can't." Lottie bit her lip. "SHE ISN'T GONE. SHE'S NEVER GONE. The Doctor. They're always there!"
Roman placed a hand on Lottie's shoulder.
"They might not-"
"How can you say that?" Lottie said, turning. It was like she was on fire, fuming. "You knew her the longest! Todd and Sarah are more broken up about this than you, and what, Sarah knew her for like, four days, max?"
Roman sighed. "I don't know." He said.
* * *
Darkness.
Where am I? Oh, this is frightfully inconvenient. Am I actually dead? Hm. It's almost comforting, but also quite disconcerting as I've never actually 100% died before. Regenerated, sure, but that's a biological function.
Is this the afterlife? Well, I must say, I am quite disappointed. I expected Pearly Gates. And Toffee.
If this is all there is, than I can expect to get rather bored rather quickly. That is unless this is not an afterlife, and is merely a fever dream of my brain slowly shutting down before my consciousness ends forever.
That'd be rubbish.
You know, I talked to Torchwood agents about death. Most of them are so nihilistic! "ooh yes there is no life after death there is only eternal howling and physical pain for some reason," Oh, give me a break, edgelords. Dante was probably more optimistic.
Not that I'm a fan of the whole Inferno idea.
Not that I like any ideas about death, actually. Tends to be a thing you don't think of, or else you get really emotionally unstable. Like Margaret Thatcher.
Hey, that joke works on multiple levels because Margaret Thatcher is both unstable and something you can't think of or else you get unstable wow I'm a comedic genius
I'm also dead
HELP
OH GOSH HELP ME WHERE AM I
OKAY YEAH THIS IS PRETTY BAD NOT GONNA LIE
SO BORRRRRREEEEEEDDDDD
Yeah, like the Torchwood agents are still wrong though I wanna be clear about that
Anyway
HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPP
Is that a face? In the nothingness?
Hello, face.
I'm fucking dead, how are you?
Another face.
Ooh, another.
There are hundreds. No, thousands.
What are they?
"We are your future. The faces you are yet to be."
I don't have a future! I don't have anything! I screwed shit up, I killed my alternate timeline future self thing it's really a mess but I'm dead and she's dead and we're all super dead
Who's there? Oh, it's a quirky brunette. I'm that quite frequently. Well, I would be if I'm not dead. And another one. A mustachioed man in a suit and another...another....
...Rogue? The Rogue Me? My future.
I do have a future.
I remember, I saw it.
But how can that be if I am dead?
How can I still be alive?
Hmm. Let me think.
How can I still be alive?
...
Because I still have work to do.
I still have to save every planet, every mining colony, every space station, every period piece, every pure historical once in a while, every stupid quarry with Daleks in it, I have to be there.
Fine.
Look! There's the other me. The me... The me I spent so long trying to kill. God, I was an idiot. A stupid terrible idiot - well, goodbye old idiot me. It's you that the world depends on.
So take my hand. There. And let me become you.
Let me let you have a future again. Let me atone for what I've done, the mess I've made, and someday, Let me help you undo it. Let this not be the end. Doctor, you helped me be the Doctor, and I've messed that up far too many times. I've died far too many times, I wanted more time because it wasn't enough but the time I had was so so precious. And... and it was enough. So please. Let me be you.
And say hi to my friends for me.
* * *
"I'm out! I'm not dead! I'm not dead! I saw my future, I have a future! I'm not dead!" The Doctor said, smiling, and tears dripping down her face. "I have work to do. I'm going to get back into the TARDIS, and I'm going to save the universe! All over again, and again, and again!"
The Doctor rushed down the hill.
Sarah Connor blinked, amazed that this was what she was seeing.
The Doctor rushed down, and swung the door open on her rusty blue box, and she swung the lever, and with that classical whoosh, it all came pouring back out.
The future came pouring out into the universe again.
Well. It was about time.
And over the hill, inside the cottage, A much older Lottie, Todd and Roman heard the TARDIS grind and groan once more, and they looked at eachother, and they smiled.
The End
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