Waking Up Dead

Originally published on under my penname DreamCaster I add this to my account as part of my aim to get all my fanfic in one place.

This is a 9/Rose story. I hope you enjoy.

Waking Up Dead

Goodbyes had never been his strong suit. They had a tendency to get in the way and to turn difficult decisions into impossible ones. There were occasions when they were not appropriate, there were occasions when there was no time left, but mostly they were just words that he did not want to say because goodbye was so final, and with a lifetime spanning centuries final words were said too much.

This time he had wanted to say the words but they had stolen from his lips and he was left with static ringing in his ears and his final adieu hung in the emptiness that followed. There would be no last goodbye and there would be no more I love yous. There would be only death, and he would be the hand of God delivering destruction to more people than he would ever be able to forgive himself for. It was war, it was his duty, it was the only way. If there was a hell he knew that he would be existing in it for all of eternity.

Life, he mused, was filled with mediocrity which was made bearable by the moments which really mattered. For most people, even his own kind, these were moments of births and deaths, of love, marriage, success and failure. He had had a good life, a busy life, a life filled with adventure and excitement, he had met fantastic creatures, seen several wonders of many universe and even saved his favourite planet from annihilation on more occasions than he cared to count. But those things would not matter now because in a few moments he and all the other Time-Lords would be wiped out of existence and who knew what would happen then? Cause and effect would suggest that the histories of all the planets he had visited in his travels would change, some of them might even be better for his absence. He would never know.

Everything was prepared, he had been meticulous in his calculations trying to contain the devastation as much as he could. The Time-Lock was in place ready to be activated as his corner of the universe was ripped out of existence in past, present and future. All it would take was one tiny movement of his finger and everything would be over. There would be no more Daleks, the universe would be safe.

And there would be no more Time-Lords.

He studied his hand as it hovered above the console. Long musician's fingers with immaculate nails, a hand too perfect to reek such destruction. He had not foreseen it but this was his destiny.

All around the sky was on fire. Dalek ships and Time-Lord TARDIS burned in gaseous explosions but it was the Daleks who were winning. Millions of their fighters littered the night, the Time-Lords were overwhelmed and out gunned. Arcadia had fallen, Gallifrey would follow and soon the Daleks would possess all the secrets of time and nothing ever created would be safe again.

There was no more time.

The Doctor looked at the universe once more and drank in her beauty, and as he reached for the switch that would wipe his own kind from existence he smiled darkly and whispered, "It will only hurt for a minute."

Time fractured and imploded on itself. The stars were sucked into the blackness of the void, the light that had been excreted from those pinpricks of life extinguished in a moment that seemed to last for an eternity as 900 years of living passed before dark eyes. For a moment the universe flashed with all its brilliance as a million suns collided. Time. Life. Space. All turned to particles of dust to float, meaningless, in the darkness for an infinity that could never be measured because there would be no-one left to see it. The voices of the Reapers screamed in his ears, talons scratching away existence, prehistoric mouths devouring light and dark, and all the denominations of Time that had ever existed. Who devoured the Reapers he did not know, but they were gobbled up as quickly as the rest of space, world upon world tumbling in on each other, dragged into a perpetual black hole that gaped like an open mouth.

His flesh burned as he died, blistering beneath the tattered velvet jacket. A final death to add to the seven others, one that he would never remember. Nothing would survive. He watched himself sink into the centre of the field of destruction, little blue police box spinning out of control. He had created a paradox, one so big it would affect the whole of space and time. Time-Lords, for all their laws about non-interference with inferior races, would be the undoing of the galaxy. Each step trod on each world throughout space was erased. The girl who dodged the Time-Lord on a London street and bumped into her future husband had no-one to dodge, she bore no children and generations of the future were corrupted. A child saved by the materialisation of a TARDIS, died as he stepped out onto the road. Events unravelled. Worlds exterminated by Daleks blossomed for a millisecond, lives past and present experienced in full and snuffed out a moment later, the universe non-the-wiser.

His world died and for a moment he was glad. Life would survive somewhere, unthreatened by Daleks, and that was worth dying for. His hand gripped the TARDIS console, feeling her fear pulsate through him. She screamed in his mind, hurling them away from the emptiness that was hauling them in. He fell, crashing into the metal grating at his feet. His face burned, his hands rippled with the regeneration that would never occur, and when the darkness came he knew nothing but relief.

Waking up on the floor of the TARDIS wearing clothes that were far too tight and staring at a hand he did not recognise the immediate survival instinct of celebration was obliterated by the sudden remembrance of what should have been. He staggered to his feet feeling the too tight trousers cutting into his groin and the once beautiful velvet jacket restraining him as well as any bindings had ever done. The lights were out, except for an emergency glow which emanated from the centre of the console and a monitor flickered obtusely to his right, snatching away images before he could focus on them. His body was stiff, unwieldy, bigger than before, broader, with big hands that punched at the controls awkwardly, missing the nuances of a former gentle caress.

Space stood before him, the monitor finally displaying what lay outside the battered blue box that hung in space like a beaten carcass from a butcher's meat hook. There were stars. Millions of them. Just as there had always been. The universe was still there, though what had preserved it was beyond his comprehension. Perhaps the Reapers could not exist without the universe, a double paradox? The Reapers destroy the universe therefore they could not exist to commit that act in the first place. The universe was in flux, remodelling itself, becoming different and yet the same. He could feel it. The vortex from the centre of the TARDIS throbbed in his mind making the grogginess worse. She was more powerful than he had ever know, thrusting her knowledge into his head until his head pounded so loudly he could hear nothing else. He staggered, grasping at the console for stability.

Realisation took his legs from beneath him and forced his stomach to spew out the remains of whatever had been his last meal. The Vortex was whole. No longer spread between every TARDIS ever grown. There were no more TARDIS. There were no more Time-Lords. There was just him. In his mind he reached out to the universe desperately searching for a sign of Gallifreyan life. But there was no-one left to respond.

The TARDIS moaned in sorrow, the sound ringing through the ship like a wolf baying at the unforgiving moon. Tears stained his foreign cheeks and he howled with his ship. The last survivors of a world removed from time.

He changed from necessity rather than desire, fighting himself out of his previous self's clothes and putting on the first items that came to hand. He covered the mirror with a sheet, catching sight only of a set of large ears and refusing to examine the skin of his new body in any further detail. He did not deserve life, but the universe seemed to want to keep him, and suicide would only produce another regeneration. Another pointless waste of a life. The tiniest spark of self preservation convinced him that he had survived for a reason when the rest of his people had died.

The mirror remained covered until a thick beard had grown, and he realised that he had been sitting in the shell of the TARDIS for longer than he could remember, doing nothing but scan for survivors. When he braved the looking glass, pale blue eyes stared back at him through recessed eye sockets, and gaunt cheek bones poked through about the mass of dark hair that seemed to surround his face.

Shaving proved difficult with unfamiliar facial contours and unresponsive hands. Cutting his hair was substantially easier with the help of the TARDIS as she guided his hands to form some sort of style.

"Thanks, old girl."

His throat was dry, the words struggling to come out, weeks of silence broken with a rough Northern accent that surprised him. Presently he examined himself fully in the mirror and decided he wasn't too fond of this rough, rugged, look. Much less sophisticated than his previous selves, though less eccentric than some which was comforting.

"Karma," he tested out his new voice again. "I suppose I should be glad I didn't come back as a Mangarian Flea, or a sea-slug."

The TARDIS brushed his thoughts softly.

"Regenerated into the body of another stupid ape," he growled, pulling an ear back to test flexibility. "A stupid ape crossbred with a cartoon elephant. Fantastic."

He would never say that he was lonely, despite the silence that permeated the TARDIS for weeks on end.

"I keep myself company," he told some particles of dust that rushed up from a disused cupboard one day when he swung open the door while searching for something more appetising than boiled rice and a tinned tuna, his staple diet since the destruction of Gallifrey. "Don't need anyone, me. The TARDIS and I do quite well, thanks very much."

The particles of dust floated passed his nose and then dropped slowly to the floor, indifferent to the plight of the last Time-Lord. The dust particles had several million allies across most of the ship's surfaces. What did it know about loneliness anyway?

Damage to the TARDIS had been extensive during the war. Her battered frame bore scars of battle, her systems fragmented, her innards distributed liberally across decks. To a point she healed herself, her own automated regeneration. For five days she confined him to his room, ignoring his outbursts of anger and frustration as he pounded on the door, his voice ravaged through a venomously delivered diatribe as he tried everything he knew to release himself from the prison of his vessel's making. Exhaustion, and the futility of the exercise, forced him to sleep on a bed he had not laid on in months, the sheets emitting the faint odour of his previous self as he lay, curled up in abject misery. Denied distractions his mind replayed the end of the universe with clinical accuracy, the scalpel of undeniable truth scoring through his flesh into the pit of his desolate soul. His ship felt his pain as keenly as she did her own and they withdrew from each other's consciousness, unable to comfort the other's soul.

When the door of his room opened, he stared through the doorway, unwilling to venture into the un-chartered territories of a newly designed interior. Metal grills lined the floor, but the walls were earthy, organic, great arms of life stretching from the centre of the TARDIS, like bows of an ancient oak, or the tentacles of some immense sea creature. For the most part, the rooms were where he expected to find them. Redecorating evidently did not include relocating on this occasion. A bitter admiration brought a rough smile to his lips. The TARDIS had grown, in an emotional sense. She fought on when he pitied his own existence and amongst the beauty of the new design he felt dark, out of place. The lonely traveller, destroyer of worlds. Murderer.

He reached out towards the wall of his re-born ship, tracing a trembling finger along the smooth, hard surface. The TARDIS recoiled at his touch, and his hand fell away slowly. He had never been more alone.

The TARDIS deposited him on Earth, and whilst she was incapable of physically ejecting him from her presence her rejection of him was sufficient to encourage his departure immediately after landing. With leather jacket, psychic paper and his sonic screwdriver, he stepped out into London, 2005.

Humans were, by and large, a wholly unobservant bunch. Aliens wandered about the city with comparative ease, drawing the occasional look for their fashion sense - or lack thereof - but generally managing to conceal themselves from further scrutiny. Granted the aliens that shopped at Harrods had the physical attributes of their earthly counterparts, but even one or two more unusual life forms managed to steal the odd glance at Buckingham Palace, if from the safety of a water culvert. Human ambivalence amused him. Self absorbed little creatures, so helpless, so unable to see the dangers that lurked beneath the surface of their pitiful little world.

The city stank of pollution. Car fumes hung in the air like a shroud, and litter blew haphazardly across pavements and into the gutter. He walked unnoticed across the street, scuffing the heels of his shoes against the tarmac, and wandered aimlessly through arcades of shops, not stopping, not looking. It was afternoon when his senses returned to him. Not all at once, but in pieces. There was a taste in the air, an acrid plastic taste that he could not place, and then the scent of something decidedly not human and vaguely familiar.

He frowned, and felt the crease in his forehead was different to how it had felt before. He paused, listened, and heard the sound of something very alien moving beneath the ground. He found himself walking tall, feet no longer scuffing the ground as he strode, purposefully now, along the pavement.

The trail led to a department store with a white 'sale' banner hanging above the main entrance. He walked in, brushing past a doorman in a top hat and a blonde girl tidying the display of women's jackets. The smell was stronger inside. At first it seemed to be all around him, and he wandered nonchalantly between the designer outfits and fancy shoes until he spotted a door marked 'private'. No humans noticed as he stepped through the door and followed the scent down the stairs and into the basement.

He strode resolutely down the concrete corridors, the smell of plastic now filling his lungs. This was danger, familiar danger. He needed confirmation, but he thought this was something he had seen before, fought before. A line of shop dummies blocked his path. Stupid place to leave them, he thought, shoving one roughly out of his way. The new body had strength, and the dummy scattered the others like bowling pins. Impressed, he swaggered a little and looked back to see the trail of destruction.

All the dummies were on their feet walking towards him.

"Oh," he said, surprised as much by the sound of his voice as the walking plastic people. "Autons then."

They approached him with stiff, rigid movements. He supposed they were meant to look threatening.

"Oi, what's going on down there?"

A human male stepped out from behind a door that said 'Chief Electrician'. Bits of wire hung out of the pockets of his dark blue trousers. The Doctor noticed that the man was scowling at him and that he was holding a large spanner.

"Go on, bugger off before I call security!"

"Not a very good idea for me to be buggering off just at the moment," the Doctor said cheerfully. "Got a bit of a problem. You best get back in your office or run away. Choice is yours really."

The Chief Electrician didn't move, which was a mistake, because he didn't see the Auton that was stood behind him until it had gripped his throat with its vice-like hand. The Doctor jammed his sonic screwdriver into the neck of the Auton, rotating the frequencies with one hand whilst trying to release the human with his other. Both actions failed, and the Chief Electrician was dropped to the floor just inside the door to his office, dead.

"No, no, no, no, no!" he screamed and finally found the right setting on the screwdriver, driving the Autons back a few steps.

Blood pounded in his veins. Another race was going to be destroyed. The Autons would take the Earth. Obliterate it. Kill every living thing just like the Daleks. He could not allow it. He would not allow it. These people had to be saved, at any cost. All he needed was a little time and some tools. All of which were available in the electrician's office. Jumping inside, he slammed the door shut behind him, casting a quick glance at the dead man at his feet. A moment of monumental sadness overwhelmed him. He didn't even know the man's name.

Wires of assorted colours, batteries, tools and a host of other materials littered the tiny room. With the right mind, and he had the right mind, he could manufacture a bomb big enough to wipe out half the country. All he needed was enough equipment to blow up the building and incinerate all the plastic inside. A calculator, some wires, a few selected items from his own pockets and the device was ready. The dead man's digital watched beeped twice. 5pm. Perfect. The store would be empty soon. All the little humans would be running off to make their beans on toast and watch TV. Nobody had to get hurt. Brilliant. All he had to do was wait for a while, let it go quiet upstairs, then strap this baby to the oil burning heating system he could smell and boom. Autons destroyed, Earth saved. Piece of cake.

"Wilson?"

He rolled his eyes. Humans. They had to get in the way. They were always blundering in, oblivious to the dangers. He would keep quiet. Let the girl get bored looking for whoever Wilson was. It wouldn't take long. She'd be wanting her tea soon anyway.

"Wilson," her voice was getting nearer, "I've got the lottery money."

Her hand banged on the door before him. Quickly he soniced the lock shut. Some daft London shop girl walking in on an alien and a body would really mess up his plans.

"Wilson?"

She seemed to run out of patience and moved on. He listened for a while, then made a final check of the detonator that he grasped so tightly his knuckles were white. He unlocked the door and stepped over the Chief Electrician without a second look. He had to be focused; the world was counting on him. He followed the pipes that led towards the heating system and the oil storage that he knew would be close by. His hearts were racing. He could feel the blood lust, the cry of battle ready to burst from his lungs, but he contained it, marching onwards, not looking left or right.

It was then that he heard her. Just moments away from his destination, he heard the girl again. She had not gone home at all but wandered on, straight into the dummy storage room. He could hear her voice, her panicked voice.

"Very funny. I get the joke," she was saying. "You can stop it now."

Human girl meets unfriendly Autons. Fantastic. He stuffed the detonator in his pocket and marched off to look for her.

Finding her didn't take long. He could taste the fear in the air, and her voice was getting louder with every step. She had done well, he thought. She had survived at least 3 minutes without being grabbed and exterminated by a strong plastic hand, but now she had backed herself into a corner, and a horde of Autons were seconds from ending what looked like a very short life. Adrenalin pulsed through him. The thrill of the impending chase startled every synapse, and every muscle jumped into action. Unnoticed, he slid along the wall, watching the Autons, who only had eyes for the pretty blonde in the pink sweater.

She was trapped now. Scared, confused, but not screaming, he noted with some satisfaction. He hated the screaming. The Auton's hands were raised, ready to karate chop her neck. She turned her head so not to see the first blow, even her small ape brain realising death was imminent.

Fire spun through his blood, the urge to protect overpowering the urge to destroy. He lunged forward, and as he grabbed her hand they caught each other's eyes. Anticipation of the chase flooded through him, and as a broad grin rampaged across his face, one word leapt from his lips.

"Run!"