Endgame

The flashing lights hurt my eyes and the contents of my aching head are a mingled blur. I take a second to close my eyes. For one panicked moment, I don't know which way is up, or down, or anything anymore and every part of my body is stiff with dull pain but soon the feeling resides. I have probably done more physical exercise this past day then in all my life put together.

I open my eyes. The Doctor is nearly finished constructing his mingled device of nuts, screws and odd materials sticking out of it at strange angles. We are in the relative safety of what looks like a storage cupboard, but still I am alert and attentive – more so now that I have rested. Clara is next to me staring at the Doctor whilst the Doctor is doing what he usually does, which as far as I can tell mainly consists of being confusing. Muttering under his breath he is tearing strips of wire together and ramming seemingly random objects in to a strange device made of odd ends.

'What's that?' I ask, my voice strangely ringing in my ears as I shout to be heard over the wailing sirens.

'There's a computer core a couple of metres away from us. This thing,' the Doctor points at the odd contraption in his hand before continuing, 'it will scramble the generators and wipe the memory, not to mention blow up a couple of circuits – irreparable. Without their computer, the aliens here won't be able to do anything. In fact, more devastating will be the fact they can't even communicate without their translator. They'll descend in to chaos,' the Doctor explains.

'I don't want them to descend in to chaos,' I point out curtly. 'What they did, it was self defence. If I were them, I would be curious.'

'What if I told you they purposely crashed your ship to salvage more technology,' the Doctor says. His expression is unreadable, his unnaturally cold voice devoid of emotion except for the small hint of anger seeping in.

'What?' Clara asks, bemused. It takes a few seconds to comprehend what he has said. I stand, gawping at him, muddled mind unresponsive.

'The aliens, destroyed my ship?' I whisper slowly, not knowing if it is a question or a statement. The Doctor nods. Clara just looks at the Doctor with wide eyes. I am disorientated, surprised and more than anything confused.

'But…Why?' Nobody answers. The silence is oppressing.

The Doctor stands up and for the first time I see just how old he is. He is not childish, he is not cheerful, he is not one to be joked with and he is old, older then the night. His eyes are like miniature storms and his expression is cold as frost. When we are out of our safe hiding place he marches up to the nearest door he can find and yanks it open. Of course the guns are on him at once.

'Hello! Point your silly little guns at me. I'm the Doctor,' he shouts. I follow him in to the room absent minded, not really taking in any of my surroundings at all. My feelings are conflicted – should I hate these people. I am tempted to.

I stop as I see them in a line as though they have been waiting for us – the aliens; there are hundreds of them (that might be small exaggeration) their expressions that of anger but there is a glint of fear in their eyes.

'I want to speak to your leader,' the Doctor continued. The faces in the room one by one turned in to surprise.

It is scared. Although it struts in full of ego, with an air of authority around it, the fear is apparent in almost as a tangent smell, in the way it shivers when the Doctor smiles. It is scared, scared of the Doctor and I find that strangely amusing. Well, we did just manage to escape an army of the aliens and be undetected for the last couple of hours. My fist is clenching and unclenching. Part of me wants to see him dead, all of them dead and humiliated. The other is simply confused.

'Now,' the Doctor starts. 'I have a deal. We leave you alone, you leave us alone and you stop shooting down space ships.'

'And w…w… why should I l…l…listen to you?' it asks.

'Because you destroyed the home of people I like and you are not in the position to negotiate. Now we leave and it will be like nothing has happened.' The Doctor smiles before pulling a chair from the corner of the room and sitting down with his legs stretched out in front of him. 'Now, should we get back to business?' he says spreading his arms.

It is going well, or so I presume from the startled face of the alien in front of the Doctor – it is always good to be one step ahead of your enemies; well, that's my point of view. Suddenly the door behind us bangs open and another alien walks in. I raise my eyebrows silently taking in the new figure who obviously is in more control of this place then the so called 'leader'; it's stature is that of confidence and he has no fear in his eyes. It is either it is powerful or very ignorant. I mutely find myself hoping that it is the latter.

'What is this? Do not tell me you are negotiating with these, 'outsiders',' the new alien says curtly; making it obvious he was stifling a laugh. It hadn't realised but the Doctor's aura is growing steadily stronger and angrier, making the air feel electrified. The hairs on the back of my head ping upwards as though attracted by static electricity.

'Do you have a problem with that?' the Doctor asks.

'Outsiders are not permitted to speak,' it hisses back, pointing his gun. 'I suggest we arrest them immediately.' I stand ready for anything when suddenly we are plunged in to darkness.

A hand grabs my arm and I manage to stifle a scream as I feel that it was human. It tugs me towards the door and from the faint glimmer that passes through the crack there I see that it is Clara leading me with the Doctor's arm clenched tightly in the other hand.

'Saw a switch, thought I should press it,' Clara explains once we were outside. A commotion is growing inside the room where the aliens are desperately trying to get control of the situation and were obviously failing to do so. The shouts coming from inside are progressively desperate and loud but deciding to ignore them we continue down the corridor.

'What do we do?' I ask.

'We use the thing,' the Doctor replies simply holding up the computer scrambling thing.

It doesn't take us long to find somewhere we could activate the thing from. There are lots of computers and wires to connect the thing to, but the Doctor seems irritated. When Clara asks what is wrong he says he is missing a connection wire.

'It's something long and thin and…' he stops as I hold up something that I had been fiddling with in my pocket for a while now. It is the wire that had got tangled when I fell through the delivery chute.

'…Something like that,' he finishes, smiling. Taking it, he connects it to one of the shining consoles and flips the leaver on the side of the devise he had just created it. Sparks flew and for a second nothing happens. Then the image on one of the big displays fuzzes in and out of focus before going out, fading in to black. The alarm dies and the light turns off, plunging us in to darkness. There is a strange sense of satisfaction growing in my chest. I ignore it as best as I can.

As if on cue, the Doctors screwdriver starts warbling from inside of his pocket and he takes it out, using the pulsing green light on the top as a torch before flicking it and examining it.

'The TARDIS!' he exclaims. He slams open one of the doors leading off of the room we were now in and there, just behind the door is his TARDIS – it is a big blue box. The words POLICE are written boldly on the top underneath a lamp which glows ever so slightly in the dark. It is made of wood and the exterior was, as far as I can see quite small; surely only one person could fit. One thing that I find very strange is how normal it looks, even though it is distinctively different from its surroundings.

'It's umm… a wooden box,' I say nervously.

'Oh don't worry. You'll get it once you step inside,' Clara laughs at my reaction. The Doctor struts up to the deep blue thing and, stroking the wood, unlocks the door, whispering to it as though it was a person.

The door behind us suddenly bursts open and a lone alien bursts in looking shocked for a moment before running out again, probably to call friends.

'Get in,' the Doctor shouts and Clara runs to comply. I pause, staring at the alien for one long second.

'Amelia?' the Doctor asks, gesturing at the open door. There is a roar at the back of my head, a ferocious beast clawing its way out. I stare at the alien, now blabbering something incomprehensible and waving its pale arms; it is small – young, maybe. There is a frantic air around it, full of desperation that tells me it is begging. I hold my glare and it sinks back, afraid.

It is that one movement that jolts me out of my haze. I look at the alien and see fear. I jolt back, revolted at my actions; it is not its fault.

Without another word, I jog through the wooden door that has a severe creaking problem and gasp as the sight hits my eyes. It is massive inside; huge, an unimaginably big, circular room with even more doors going off the edges of the sleek blue interior. In the middle is a console, also circular with so many bits on it that my eyes hurt from trying to look at them all. On the top there are two spinning disks on top of each other with strange shapes on the edge – circles overlapping circles. There are more circles around the room (maybe the Doctor likes circles).

'It's… it's… it's bigger on the inside,' I splutter and the Doctor grins at me.

'I love it when people say that,' he comments and swaggering over to the consol, he flicks the switch. A strange metallic thumping fills the air.

As I open the door, it creaks and when I look out I see that we aren't in the alien room but somewhere else entirely. My mouth drops open as I recognise the science institute with the training centre opposite it that is where the voyage had started from – the glass panels, the scribbled graffiti on the walls that the caretaker battles with every day. People bustle in and around the building, shopping and doing normal stuff that normal people do. My heart clenches and I sniff back tears as I realise we are on Earth. I am home.

I stand still, too surprised to say anything. I look at the Doctor and he smiles back, twiddling his bow tie – it's a sad smile.

'Good bye… Amelia Pond,' he says. Then giving us one last glance he and Clara walks back inside the TARDIS. Along with a metallic thumping sound the big blue box disappears. I stand still amongst the colourful sea of people.

'Bye doctor,' I whisper at the empty air where the majestic blue TARDIS stood just seconds before.