AN: This is a somewhat short, two-shot crossover I thought of, combining two of my favorite sci-fi series. If you have not watched Battlestar Galactica and plan on watching it, just a fair warning that this will contain major spoilers. Also, listening to the BSG soundtrack (especially Battlestar Sonatica, One Year Later, Kobol's Last Gleaming, and Violence and Variations) set this great mood for me, don't know if they would do the same to you C: Enjoy!
The gentle whooshing stopped and was soon replaced by an equally gentle silence. Rose looked up from her lap and at the Doctor, who was sporting the smallest of grins.
"So where are we?" she asked. The Doctor sighed and glanced at his watch.
"Two hundred thousand years ago, and in your solar system too." He adjusted his jacket and trotted up to the door. "Come along, Rose. We should be right outside of Earth's gravitational pull."
"Well what's the point in that," she said as she quickly got up and walked over to him. He opened the door but instead of the silence of space, a low humming could be heard.
"I was going to show you how the Earth has changed over the millennia," he said, confused. They stepped out of the TARDIS and onto a ship. It was old and broken, with cracks in the walls and the floors dulled to an eerie darkness. His face contorted into curiosity mixed with confusion. "This is a human ship," he said with disbelief.
"But I thought you said it was two-hundred thousand years ago," Rose said, examining a hallway a distance off. She sniffled and shivered. "Doctor, come look at this."
"It is two-hundred thousand years ago," he said, glancing at his watch as he walked to the hall. "And this is... definitely... a human ship..." His voice broke off as he looked at the walls of the hall. They were coated in photos of humans, with candles on the ledges that stuck out. People of every shape, size, and colour adorned the walls.
"Did they all die?" Rose asked, setting down a deformed candle. She picked up a photo of one woman and stared at it. "Their clothes seems awfully modern."
"Modern, but not futuristic..." he breathed out. The Doctor was scanning the candles with his screwdriver with his heavy brow pressed into inquiry. "These candles were burning no less than a week ago."
"So did they abandon ship or disappear or-"
The Doctor held up a hand and made a quick shushing noise. Rose looked at him curiously and silently walked up to him. He squinted for a moment before carefully walking down the hall and into another. Rose pursed her lips and furrowed her brow before trotting off with him as quietly as she could manage.
"What do you hear, Doctor?" she whispered.
"Speech. Babbling. Someone just speaking for the hell of it." He turned into another hallway with hatches on all sides. Rose heard the voice too; it was confused and belonged to a young man. The Doctor pressed his ear on one hatch, then another, and another, before exhaling. He grabbed his screwdriver and pressed it to the large door, an empty creaking noise following soon after.
"The eye of God is greeting us as we complete our journey. Kara Thrace, the harbinger of death, had a divine protector. Man shall take flight and touch the heavens only to be burned down. The water is rising faster than we can run-"
"What in the world is this, Doctor," Rose asked as she stepped in the room. It was glowing a dull red with wires going everywhere. The Doctor started walking to the babbling man in the center. He was bald and naked, sitting in a tub of water with more wires connecting to all sides of the basin. Aside from the reddish glow the man gave off, the room was terrifyingly dark.
"It's a control room and this is the ship's captain..." he said as he reached out for the man in the tub. The moment his hand made contact the man's head whipped to look emptily at the Doctor.
"The lord of time will both doom and save the harbinger of death. He has come to complete the loop, where the storm meets peace and where an imprint burns like a scar." The man's muscles relaxed and he resumed the position of looking straight forward.
"Who is the harbinger of death?" the Doctor asked, grabbing his shoulders in an attempt to regain the strange, hollow attention.
He resumed his monologue for a few more moments before once again saying, "Kara Thrace, the harbinger of death, had a divine protector."
"Doctor, is he a machine?" Rose asked, stepping beside both men. The Doctor frowned.
"No..." He scanned the mumbling man with his screwdriver. "He has severe head trauma and a very strange essence..." Rose snorted.
"Essence? Are you talking about his spirit?"
"Something along those lines. His 'spiritual' essence is well over two thousand years old... And at a cellular level he is identical humans."
"Are you implying that he isn't?"
"At a molecular level they are some very small differences and the nervous system contains more silicates than are normal with humans..."
"And that means?" Rose asked staring at the man closely. The Doctor pocketed his screwdriver and grew an expression of awe.
"Rose, this is a synthetically made human and he is flying this ship! Oh wow, this is fantastic," he said as he began observing the room.
"Well why is he speaking like this?" Rose said, gently touching his shoulder. He glanced at her just as rapidly as he did the Doctor.
"The bad wolf will strike down the empire with dissolution and decay. Biting. Gnawing. Breaking. Fluids only partly flowing are flowing down the steam to destruction as the hole in their structures touches the dawn of time. End of line. Repeat. The bad wolf will strike down the empire with dissolution and decay. Biting. Gnawing. Breaking. Fluids only partly flowing are-"
"Doctor!" Rose said with mild urgency. The man's voice only became louder.
"He responds to stimulus, take your hand off of him!" the Doctor shouted. He was examining the wiring systems littered around the room.
"My hand is off of him!"
"Oh for heaven's sake," the Doctor muttered as he walked over the man with his screwdriver at the ready. "Let's see how synthetic you are..." The screwdriver hummed for a few moments. The man's voice died down until it was a quiet murmur. "Hm! Didn't actually expect that to work."
"Doctor, why is there a synthetic human two-hundred thousand years in the past?"
"Excellent question! Considering, after all, you haven't evolved from hairy bumbling imps yet, I'm just as lost as you are. Good looking chap too; whoever made him did an excellent job."
"He said the lord of time would save the harbinger of death."
"Funny considering how I usually, you know, stop those kinds of people."
"So you do think he was referencing you?"
"He is hooked up to a huge computer system that spans across many other ships. This man has very strange spatial and temporal knowledge. It's as if his mind is being fed millions of facts at any moment and he tries to process it and speak it as best he can."
"Well can't you, I don't know, slow down his mind for a second?"
"After that last little instance, I may just be able to," he said smiling at Rose. He put the screwdriver on its last setting and observed that the babbling the man was shooting out slowed down drastically. "What is your name?" he started off simply enough.
"A parent of the false children, my pattern has no new home and is left to burn along with the chariots of mankind."
"Yes but your name. Like this is Rose Tyler, what is your name?"
"I am the hybrid. My body and mind perished and were revived with the soul of Galactica, my name irrelevant and my past life fulfilled."
"Oh for heaven's sake," the Doctor muttered. "Two words, that's all I'm asking for." The man froze and gasped for the air the way a fish does when pulled out of the water.
"Samuel Anders," he replied at last.
"Right, and what is this ship doing?"
"The journey has been fulfilled and my soul will burn in the heart of the elements. The ships make their last breaths as their lungs fill with particles beyond the scope of inhuman capability."
"Come again," Rose said.
"We are making our last journey to be fuel for the future generations."
"He is flying these ships into the sun," the Doctor muttered. "Look, Samuel, I need you to think clearly and answer me this: Why?"
"The harbinger of death found the new home for humanity. There humanity and its children will survive and thrive and grow. A new start, where humanity wants not the technology of a darker time."
"Why does humanity need a new home?"
"Kobol had twelve children. Those twelve children had billions of their own. The thirteenth child was vain and raised its own children. They killed themselves with hearts of matter and lay waste to their parent."
"What was Kobol?"
"A rock, large enough to spin in space and time."
"It was planet..." Rose said.
"And its thirteen children were also planets... So what about the children from the remaining twelve planets?"
"They replicated the thirteenth's children who in turn killed mankind. The twelve children were also destroyed with the hearts of matter."
"So thirteen planets were nuked and the humans didn't bother to just return to Kobol?"
"God has sealed off Kobol. To set foot on the banished home is to sell your companion for the feast of spiteful deities that have been forced to their knees."
"Kobol's cursed," the Doctor muttered, more for Rose's sake than his own. "So the humans have come to Earth to start anew..."
"So humans were advanced many millennia prior to where I am from," Rose stated. The Doctor stopped his screwdriver, allowing Samuel to resume his torrential release of utterances.
"I should've known," the Doctor said turning to rose. "You blasted humans make one stupid mistake, so you flee from one planet to next only to blow the event off as superstition and repeat it. Never bothering about history or the lot, too busy with your heads in the clouds, thinking about how special you are."
"Hey now, these aren't my... I mean they aren't Earth humans," Rose protested.
"No but you come from them, and you Earth humans will make the same mistake..."
"I am confused as to what this mistake is," Rose said, indignation appearing on her face.
"The thirteenth child was populated by synthetically made humans. The same as this man. The other twelve planets passed off the thirteenth as superstition and 'replicated the thirteenth's children who in turn killed mankind'. And believe me when I say you humans will do it again..."
"Okay, but you have to admit," Rose said, touching the basin, "it is rather impressive that humans managed to create a form of life." The Doctor frowned.
"The humans adapted life, not created it. And anything can adapt life if given enough time."
"I don't see why you are getting so fussy," she said.
"Because humans always repeat their mistakes over and over, never bothering to try to prevent them from happening again."
"And how do you know that this isn't their way of making sure it doesn't happen again? By flying the technology into the sun?"
"I just know. It happens again. Not on Earth, but on its twin."
"Okay, so knowing that humans are doomed to repeat this, why are we here at this instance and not at another one?"
"Because apparently I need to find this 'Kara Thrace' and both save and kill her," the Doctor said, staring at Samuel.
Samuel stopped mumbling, inhaled sharply, and froze. Rose and the Doctor stared at him.
"The coordinates are set. Your departure is ready. The loop will be completed. End of line. Repeat. The coordinates are set-"
"I think that's our cue to leave," the Doctor said leaving the room. Rose glanced one last time at Samuel with a frown.
"Goodbye, Samuel," she said.
"End of line. Repeat," was what he replied. She sighed and left the room, retraced her steps and saw the Doctor unlocking the TARDIS at the end of the photograph covered hallway.