Title: The Question
Author: Femvamp
Fandom: Doctor Who
Spoilers: Takes place some time after Season 6, Episode 8: Let's Kill Hitler
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all its characters belong to people who are not me.
A/N: I wrote this in about ten minutes on a weird theory I had so don't really expect much cannon or sense.
THE QUESTION
In any other time or place this might have looked ridiculous even to the Doctor who liked ridiculous things. All the people that hated and feared him were standing on one side of the room and all the people who loved and cared for him...and feared him for a completely different reason were on the other side of the room. They were in the beginning and end of time. That one little place in the time stream where time both begins and ends.
It was the perfect place for what the Silence had planned.
The death of the Doctor didn't got as planned so they went to plan B which was the stop the Doctor from asking the question that was to end the universe. The question that the Doctor still didn't know.
"What question?" Rory asked for the hundredth time.
"That's just it." River smiled at her father, "Nobody knows the answer to that question."
"So no one knows the question or the answer for it anyway?"
"The silence believes that if the question is ever asked the universe will end." River said simply, "That's what they always told me."
"So it was you're job to stop him from asking it?" Amy asked.
"No They made me hate him so much I just wanted him dead. Every instance in time and space that ever went wrong from some lady getting hit by a car to Hitler..."
"Yeah we remember Hitler, I think we left him in a cupboard." Rory said simply.
"Well I blamed the Doctor for all of it."
"So did Mel."
"I was Mel." River nodded remembering bits and pieces of Mel's life, "You saved me though, all the hate that the silence gave me, you gave me love, just enough" River closed her eyes and remembered all the times she shared with her parents, "Just enough."
"We would have given you more if we knew."
"I know." River smiled, "Spoilers."
The two people who had always been her parents even before they became husband and wife smiled at her and then turned back to the conversation that the Doctor was having with the woman with the scary eye patch.
"Do you think we missed anything?" Rory whispered to his wife.
"Of course you did." The Doctor turned to Rory, "Some cutting edge war stuff but you were talking to you're family so I will forgive you just this once soldier. I was saying." He turned back to the other side, "I was saying the war is being fought over a question that I haven't asked yet. A question as old as time itself. But what is this question?" The Doctor paused, "No one knows do they? That's what scares you? If you knew the question you might be able to figure out the answer and then you'd know. Maybe even the secret to the universe, but do you want to know the secret to the universe?" He turned to River, "Should we tell them dear?"
"I don't know honey?"
"I say we do?"
"Spoilers."
"Oh just this once." He turned back to the other sides, "The secret is, there is no secret."
"Spoilsport."
"So if that's not the question then what is, I thought long and hard about that and then it came to me. What is it that everyone is always asking me and I'm never telling them. And finally it hit me. I know the question. I have always known the question.""
"Doctor." The woman who had tried to kill him who had kidnapped Melody pleaded with him.
"Do you want to know what the question is?" The Doctor walked up to her until he was only a few inches away. "Its a wonderful. beautiful question. Do you want to know?"
"I do." Amy said suddenly.
"Amy.'" Rory asked puzzled, "The universe."
"Yeah I know." Amy turned to Rory, "But she kidnapped our daughter so hell yeah I want to know why."
Rory turned to the Doctor, "The question then."
The Doctor smiled at his two friends and then River his future wife, "The question is, who am I? What is my name?" The doctor paused, and then shouted as loud as he could so everyone would hear, "WHAT IS MY NAME?"
The floor shook. The walls crumbled. And for one brief moment...there was silence.
Silence.
But just for a moment.
Because for every question there is an answers and the Doctor gave his.
And with that the silence ended.
And the universe began again.