On the Story: This story began as an excuse for me to write some Doctor and Master whumpage, but it blossomed into something more. Now I have a whole series planned, and this story is the prequel to the whole thing. This is where it all begins. Rated T for language and violence in later chappies. It's a bit Timey-Wimey and low on the romantic side, but if that seems like your thing, I encourage you to read on. Enjoy!
On the Chapter: Apologies in advance for the big, long, End of Time retread. I felt it needed to be written, both to pad the story and because I like writing about what the Doctor goes through during big, emotional scenes. This chapter's sort of like a prologue, setting the scene. More to come soon!
Disclaimer: So this is an important disclaimer for me as a University student, where plagiarism is kind of a big deal. I do not own Doctor Who, and I did not write End of Time. The dialogue in this chapter is taken word for word from a scene in the End of Time, which was written by Russell T. Davies. Not me. I'm not taking credit for it. Just the little bits in between, which I did write. Basically, if you recognize it, I don't own it.
Prologue- Deus Ex Machina
The universe is a complicated, ugly, messy, beautiful, confusing place that doesn't always make a whole lot of sense, especially where the Doctor is concerned. Have you ever had a memory that you know you shouldn't have because it never happened, but you can remember it happening anyway? That is because Time is in flux, and the universe is constantly changing around us.
Let's say you had this poodle named Puddles when you were a child. You grew up with this dog, you loved it, you cherished it, your heart shattered into a billion microscopic little pieces the day it died. Then you wake up one morning and you realize that you never had this poodle. Puddles never existed. Your mother is allergic to dogs, so you couldn't have had one growing up, which you remember because you threw a right fit when mom said no after hours of begging. You know that you've never had a pet, and yet you have this inexplicable sadness every time you see a poodle on the streets. Chances are, something changed the course of history that led up to your purchase of this poodle.
Chances are even greater that I know exactly what caused this change in your timestream, and exactly how much it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
Hello, I'm the Narrator. Just the Narrator. Like "the Doctor, just the Doctor," only I'm omniscient. Not omnipotent, alas for I did not, do not, and never will cause any of the events that I am here to relay to you. That would be the Writer's job. I simply see them all, which gives me quite the headache at times. I can see all alternate versions of the universe's Timelines, though only the Timelines relevant to this universe. I couldn't tell you about alternate universes, for which I am thoroughly grateful. It is my humble task to share with you some of the possibilities surrounding the ever-changing Timestream.
Approximately 99% of the fluxy nature of Time is caused by the Doctor, either directly or indirectly. It is important to note that there is a 1% margin of error in this calculation, and any and all changes to the Timestream not caused by the Doctor are caused by some extreme fluke that even I hardly see coming.
There is also a pretty good chance I'm making these statistics up. I often lie, but you have no choice but to believe me.
The tale I am tasked with telling you today is one in which the universe becomes wrong. The universe changes all the time and most of the time the effects are confusing but overall fairly harmless. When substantial changes are made to the Timestream, the universe becomes wrong and very, very bad things happen. This story does revolve around our dear Doctor, and though he caused this one indirectly, it is one of those rare occasions that I was caught by surprise.
As with so much that happens surrounding the Doctor, this story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, as such. Be prepared to ask "Why?" or "How?" and not receive a satisfactory answer. I will do my best to provide the closest answer, or perhaps even make something up that probably makes more sense than the truth anyway, but understand that this is the nature of the universe. Though I always see what happens, I do not necessarily understand why it happens. I am all-seeing, not all-knowing, and I am completely aware that this does not qualify me to be properly omniscient as such, but I really do not care. The point being that however little sense this story makes, it will give you some idea of how confusing my life is, how the Doctor's very existence affects all of causality, and just how important that non-existent poodle you once owned really isn't. And, if nothing else, it should at the very least be a somewhat entertaining way to kill a bit of time you could be spending doing something much more important.
Our tale begins, as all good stories ought to, with a Deus ex machina...
The Doctor had always been something of the Ultimate Survivor. He was very excellent at using his wits to get out of situations in which he would otherwise be killed and he was quite skilled at talking his way out of his death. Sure, there had been some mishaps here and there, and he should have been dead at least nine times over, but here he was, alive and well and still fighting. He was the only one to make it out of the Time War the first time around, and even now he had managed to survive his greatest enemy and the Time War a second time. He was still alive, and it was incredible. The Doctor, the Ultimate Survivor, had escaped his fate.
Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
Or not.
His hearts sunk as he realized what that knocking meant. In all honesty, he had forgotten about Wilf. He hadn't meant to, but in all the excitement, that little old man had completely slipped his mind, and now he was knocking.
Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
That was the worst sound in the universe. That soft rapping of knuckles on glass was far more terrifying to the Doctor than a Dalek cry of "EXTERMINATE," far more saddening than the sound a unicorn makes as it perishes, and far more nauseating than Sontaran poetry (there was a very, very good reason they were warriors and not linguists). There was something so inevitable in the subdued nature of the knocks, something that suggested the Doctor should have known all along it would end this way. The universe kept bringing these two men together, and it was for precisely this reason.
Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
The universe had signed up Wilfred Mott to be the Doctor's unwilling executioner.
He supposed it wasn't Wilf's fault, not really. In a way it was the Doctor's fault. It had been said in the past that his danger was in the effect he had on people, causing them to want to be like him. He did his darnedest to save everyone, and that's really all Wilf had been doing. He had only wanted to save that poor chap trapped in that glass box, and he respected Wilf for that, he really did. After all, he had no way of knowing that somebody was going to die at the hands of that wretched thing no matter what.
Cold dread clenched around his stomach as the Doctor pushed himself off his hands and sat up to face Wilf. He was sitting on his knees in a sea of shattered glass, battered and bruised, and his physical form had taken great abuse, but he didn't feel any of that. He was completely numb to any of that physical pain, overwhelmed by dread for the inevitable.
Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
Wilf gave a small, tentative wave. "They gone then?" As far as he knew, the worst of it was over. Just another day for the Doctor, saving the planet and all of reality from sure destruction. Then they could sit down for a cup of tea and recover. How wrong he would soon find himself to be. "Yeah, good-o. If you could, uh, let me out?"
"Yeah."
The word was heavy. There was so much more to the situation than Wilf realized, but the Doctor couldn't bring himself to express it quite yet, so he put all the weight of what was to come in that single word.
"This thing seems to be making a bit of a noise." Wilf sounded a bit worried about the noise, but he was still convinced that good old reliable Doctor would get him out because he didn't know what that noise meant. The Doctor did. The noise meant bad things. The noise meant 'It's either you or me, old man.'
"The Master," the Doctor said as he got to his feet, noting how strange that name tasted on his tongue now, "left the nuclear bolt running. It's gone into overload."
"And that's bad, is it?"
Yes.
"No. 'Cause all the excess radiation gets vented inside there." Inside that glass box, where you were never meant to be, old man. Or perhaps where you were always meant to be... "Vinvocci glass. Contains it." His voice was trembling now. The weight of the situation was being heaped onto his words, and he was dragging it out too long. If he put off the reality of what was about to happen any longer, his words would shatter under the load. "All 500,000 rads, about to flood that thing."
"Oh," Wilf laughed nervously. It was getting harder to tell whether the old man understood what was about to happen or not, but the Doctor suspected that he was beginning to get some idea. "Well you better let me out then."
If only it were that simple...
"Except it's gone critical." Machinery went critical all the time, so this was no big thing. Except that it was the biggest possible thing. "Touch one control and it floods." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver. The most useful tool in the universe, the one that had gotten him out of more trouble than it should have, was now useless. "Even this would set it off."
If he hadn't known before, Wilf knew what was going to happen now, and he looked strangely OK with it. That made it so much worse. "I'm sorry," he said simply. The Doctor wasn't sure if Wilf even knew what he was apologizing for, but it wasn't helping. In fact, it was also making things worse.
"Sure." He wasn't accepting the apology, just acknowledging it. After all, what was there to apologize for?
"Just leave me." The Doctor wanted Wilf to beg to be saved, to plead with him and desperately argue for his life. He wanted the old man to cling to life as was so characteristic of humans, rather than offer himself as a sacrifice. The Doctor was going to make the sacrifice himself, there was no way around it, but the old man asking him to leave made things so much harder. The Doctor was the one clinging to that survival instinct, and he was so very tempted to just do as Wilf asked. After all, people had given their lives in his name before, so why should he deny someone so willing?
"OK, right then, I will." He had all but decided to walk away, and his voice conveyed a bitterness about the fact that he was even considering the very idea. "'Cause you had to go in there, didn't you?" His words were cracking under the weight now. "You had to go and get stuck, oh yes! 'Cause that's who you are, Wilfred. You were always this." They were shattering. "Waiting for me, all this time." The weight of the situation plummeted now, the words no longer able to support it.
"No really, just leave me," he insisted. He was so ready to die, and the Doctor was so close to letting him. "I'm an old man, I've had my time."
"Well exactly, look at you. Not remotely important!" He didn't believe that. Wilfred was so very important, but it was easier to let someone insignificant die for him. "But me?" He walked around spouting the brilliance of the human race, but really, what were they in comparison to the Last Time Lord? "I could do so much more." His tenure in this body had been relatively short and there was indeed so much he wanted to see. He could do it in his next body, yes, but his do-overs were running out and though he would never admit it, he had quite a crippling fear of death. "So much more! But this is what I get. My reward. Well it's not fair!" The Doctor felt quite a bit like a child throwing a temper tantrum. That's what happened when his words could not support the weight behind them.
The Doctor took a few deep breaths to steady himself and to rebuild his words. They were no longer shattered, and they were now a bit stronger. The situation wasn't quite so heavy anymore, now that it was clear what needed to be done. He couldn't hide from it any longer, and his newfound acceptance for his fate gave him a sort of weightlessness that he couldn't quite explain.
"Oh," he breathed shakily.
He looked right at Wilfred and a great understanding passed between the two old men. They had both lived a long and full life and they were both willing to die to let the other see another day. The two of them shared so many similarities, but the important difference was that one was going to make the sacrifice for the other. Wilfred thought it was going to be him. The Doctor knew otherwise. Everything had been leading up to this moment.
"Live too long."
The decision was made. It was now that Wilf had chosen to plead with the Doctor, but he was begging for the opposite of what he should have been. It didn't matter though, because there was nothing Wilfred could say that would change the Doctor's mind. There was no way he could let this man take the fall for him. The Doctor had a couple more chances, Wilfred did not. If anyone was going to be making a sacrifice today, it would be the man who had a chance of getting out of it alive, in one way or another.
"Wilfred," the Doctor said, treating the old man's name with a great respect, "it's my honour." He meant it
The Doctor stood there a moment, fingers curled around the door handle and holding eye contact with Wilfred. Time seemed to stand still and for that brief, shining moment, all of the urgency and the pain of his sacrifice were suspended. For that one brief moment, everything was right.
Immediately after, everything went horribly, horribly wrong.
The Doctor tugged on the door. The plan was to swing it open, step inside, push the button and free Wilfred Mott. He began to panic, however, when the door refused to budge. It seemed to be stuck. "No!" the Doctor cried, eyes wild. He was failing. Wilfred was going to die after all, and it all would have been for nothing. The Doctor might as well have been the one to die, he would never be able to forgive himself for letting Wilfred take the fall for him.
"Don't worry about me, Doctor," Wilfred insisted. He was ready to die for the Doctor. He understood that he had done his best, and that he would have saved him if he could. Wilfred forgave him for failing and appreciated that he had tried.
The radiation flooded the chamber...
But it wasn't the one that Wilfred occupied. Wilf's brow creased and the Doctor's eyes widened. That wasn't supposed to happen. The other chamber was sealed and the nuclear bolt overridden. Somehow the room had sealed itself off without somebody in there to push the button. It wasn't supposed to do that, and in order for something like this to happen, somebody would have had to overridden the controls.
"What?" muttered the Doctor. He was slipping back into his action mode, nearly forgetting that Wilfred was still there.
"Is that it then?" asked Wilfred. He was relieved. Neither man had to die at the hands of that infernal contraption and that was good enough for him.
The Doctor, however, was not relieved. No, he didn't die, but he should have. One of them should have. This wasn't right. This wasn't supposed to be happening. He tried the door again, which still didn't open, and then moved onto the chamber previously occupied by Wilfred. After fiddling with a few of the controls he confirmed that the machine was indeed dead.
"It appears so," said the Doctor, "but it shouldn't be."
"Well," said Wilfred, not fully understanding the implications of this new development, "no need to look a gift horse in the mouth. What do you say we get a cup of tea and call it a day, eh?"
The Doctor just shook his head. "We can't. This shouldn't be happening, this is wrong. I can feel it... Oh." He trailed off when he took notice of an unfamiliar blonde girl who had appeared out of nowhere behind a desk. She was wearing a welding mask that was flipped up, and holding a radio in her rubber-gloved hand. "What?"
"I think it worked!" she chirped into the communication device.
What followed made the Doctor's stomach sink and his hearts leap into his throat. A reply crackled through the radio, but the content of the transmission was irrelevant. Whatever words were exchanged through the radio no longer mattered, because the Doctor recognized the second voice. It was a voice that was far too familiar and far too impossible. It was a voice he never thought he would hear again, even if he sort of always hoped he would.
"What."