Heat Death of the Universe
By TwinEnigma
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who, nor do I make profit off of these scribblings. That should be obvious.
Warnings: Character Death, AU, spoilers for Utopia, Turn Left; minor spoilers for End of Time
Far, far away and long, long ago, a woman turns right instead of left.
At the end of the universe, an old man works feverishly to give life to a dream of hope, the faint pulse of a four-beat rhythm echoing in his mind like waves upon a beach he has only seen in databanks and archives or a melody he can't quite recall.
He is old and tired and he knows he doesn't have much time left. He's so much more aware of it now than when he was found on the edge of the Silver Devastation. His hands are not so steady anymore and, some days, it is only a strange, desperate fury that allows him to continue building this clockwork amalgam of gluten and scavenged staples and circuits and string.
"We'll find a way," he tells Chantho and knows he's trying to convince himself as much as he's trying to assure her.
He wants so much for this to work, more than anything in his whole life. Just this once, he wants to be on time, when it matters so badly, because he can feel it all the way to his bones that time is running out. He's always late, always lost, the poor old relic with an antiquated title, an antiquated fob watch and antiquated clothes that someone thought made him look dashing and academic once upon a time.
It comes to him quite by accident one day – really, the boost reversal circuit, how silly of him to forget it – and the whole system flares to life with a triumphant, beautiful cry that echoes through the base. For one blissful moment, the drumming in his mind is drowned in the ecstasy of hard-earned triumph and his heart soars in a way it hasn't done since he was a boy.
It is like being brought back to life in a whirlwind of activity and orders, and he is at its center, it's master, the nameless one-two-three-four melody thundering in his ears.
And then they are all gone and he and Chantho are left alone, the last of their kind on this barren rock. He thinks maybe there's something wrong with that idea, because he's just saved the last of humanity, which means he isn't really the last. But he thinks it's fitting somehow in the back of his mind, so he doesn't think any more on it or the strange sense of a loss he's never known.
It will be a slow death for them, but he is so old and so very, very tired. They have sour coffee and he speaks of his youth and adventures in fondness, the distracted, lost little orphan who grew up to be the last Professor in the whole universe. She listens, smiling shyly, and he is grateful, because he is not alone.
It's at times like these, when he can feel his life slipping away so keenly, that he wishes his old fob watch still worked. He smiles as he turns it over in his hands, tracing symbols he thinks maybe he should remember, and thinks he has led a good life, a hero's life. He resists the urge to open the silly broken thing, although an irrational part of him wants to more than anything. It's no use, he knows that. It's so old that it's stuck fast.
What did they have need for a watch anyway?
Time is no longer important here.
He lies down to sleep, the watch's chain tangled in his fingers, and lets the sands of time run out.
The drums stop, at long last.
Far, far away, in a cage of time, a fearsome leader howls his rage to ether as a signal shatters and dies to nothing.
AN: Uh... so I was pacing around my apartment, going over the dialog and author's notes for Amarantos (in particular the big ball of exceedingly timey whimey stuff involved), and POOF! Plotbunny. Vicious little thing had sharp pointy teeth and went "Turn Left - with no Doctor, Martha or Jack, what becomes of Professor Yana/the Master?"
Donna turns right, POOF, no Harold Saxon. Instead, Yana dies a hero at the end of the universe, blissfully unaware of the chaos unfolding in the past that is slowly consuming his future (assume fixed points remain fixed and time is doing it's flux thingy as it tries to slow down the universe collapsing kaboom).