Chapter X
This Ends Here!
'This is Planet Express to USS Enterprise, do you copy?' No answer. 'Do you copy?'
No-one was aware of what had happened. Ofne second, they were patrolling Pandora for any signs of attack, the next, there had been a bright flash of green, then...they were miles away. All that had been established was something had blown up.
'Do you copy, Enterprise?'
The Planet Express Ship floated lonely through space. It was one of only a handful of survivors. The enemy had won.
That was the end of it.
The Doctor stood before the hexagon preparing to destroy him and all that was around him. He had been driven mad with anger. He stood with the frown of all frowns upon his face, arms still raised, legs still parted, waiting. The glow was becoming bright now.
'Say goodbye, Doctor.'
Seldon and Susan hugged as they accepted the inevitability of their deaths. They sat on the grass and waited for the nightmare to finally be over, to finally be free of this fear of dying...
Trudy woke with a start. The others were asleep. She got up, her bare, bootless feet making soft pit-pat noises against the metal grating of the TARDIS floor. She donned her boots, then went over to Norm. His body, wrapped in cloth, lay there. She took off the cloth, gave him a last kiss, wrapped him up again, and then saluted him.
'See you soon,' she whispered, climbing down from the stationary TARDIS into the X-Wing below. She started the machine up and flew away, undoing the cord connecting her to the TARDIS. The craft zipped away. Keeping her eye on the hexagon, she headed straight for it...
On Earth, the monoliths appeared to take an eternity to charge up. Davros really wanted to destroy the Doctor. The machine was reaching almost infinite levels of energy, and the glow was visible from Andromeda. The Doctor was peaceful now, eyes closed, breathing deeply.
Hari and Susan were coming to terms with their fates. It had been a long journey, and even if this meant death, it was still martyrdom. There must have been survivors of the massive attack, right? Susan gripped her husband tight. She hadn't loved him this much in years.
The Doctor was lost in his own thoughts. He quickly recollected everything that had happened, his arrival at Pandora, his greeting, the Daleks, Trudy and Norm capturing him, his capture, his escape, his war, his ultimate doom...
The Doctor coughed as the shimmering green shone on the back of his eyelids. He was being patient. He had never been so prepared for death. Not even after Rose's disappearance.
Which was when, in a split second, he had a vision. Four thumps. Then a sinister laugh...then...was that? No...it couldn't be... He shook his head, opened his eyes. The laser was blinding now. He was literally getting bored of waiting for death. He yawned widely. It'd all be over soon...
Trudy made her approach. What she was about to do was insane, but she felt like she was about to simply go shopping, or to training, or something, but not this. Perhaps this is what it felt like to be a Dalek, to march onward like this with no care. But she did have a care.
The X-Wing approached the Death Star alone. It floated downwards very slowly. There was just...silence. All around. No turrets firing. This was one of the worst scenarios anyone could ever face.
Trudy simply kept a straight face and manoeuvred towards the Death Star trench.
She entered it without a whisper, flying along at a casual speed. Ah, what a good life she'd had. Brief, but good. She continued on her flight path, picking up speed now. The target computer was beeping. She smiled. The target computer. Her only companion now.
She continued on her approach. The beeping got faster. She grinned. Norm would be there for her soon. Then, suddenly, a hole appeared on her computer. She pushed sharply forward on her steering.
'Take this, you murdering sonofabitch...'
The Doctor was caught off guard by something odd in the sky. He looked up in astonishment to see an exposion ripping out of the side of the Death Star. A column of flames rose off the side of the huge ship, and the laser switched off. Partially relieved, but also slightly disturbed, he dived out of the way as the monolith fell to the ground and shattered.
Hari and Susan stood up as debris flew off of the Death Star and into space. Pieces of metal came through Earth's atmosphere as the flames disappeared. The Doctor threw himself aside as a piece of titanium as tall as a regular wardrobe fell from the sky.
'What's going on up there?' asked Susan, seeing the metal was twisted and melted. It takes quite a bit of heat to melt titanium...
Jake and Neytiri woke with a shock.
'Trudy?' asked Jake, as he noticed the cord laying on the floor. 'TRUDY!'
His shouts were futile. As the two looked out of the TARDIS door, they saw the Death Star in flames. The screen showed that smoke was pouring out of a rear exhaust port.
It was then that the two realised why Trudy was not on board any more. Neytiri did nothing to react other than to speak a Na'vi funeral prayer.
'ATTENTION! ATTENTION! THE MAIN EXHAUST PORT HAS BEEN BREACHED! THE MAIN EXHAUST PORT HAS BEEN BREACHED!' screamed a frantic Dalek, rolling across the main control deck of the Death Star. Davros had felt the jolt, but thought it was just space junk.
'The exhaust port?' he cried. 'NO!'
Trudy's body, meanwhile, was intact. Her X-Wing had not fully exploded, on the contrary, the engine from inside the nosecone had fallen off, collapsing into the Death Star's central reactor. There was now a new Chernobyl going on inside it, hence why the titanium was melting. Trudy was satisfied that she had done her job, and had closed her eyes. It was all over now.
The Doctor was feeling both euphoric and dysphoric. Euphoric because he had narrowly avoided death. Dysphoric because he didn't know what had crashed into the Death Star, and he hoped it wasn't his ship.
The Death Star simply continued to melt and burn.
Inside the docking bay of the Death Star sat the Dalek Mothership. Several Daleks standing guard had floated away and off into space upon discovering the Death Star was suffering catastrophic levels of damage. They were lucky, as the back wall suddenly exploded...
'THE DOCKING BAY HAS BEEN BREACHED! THE DOCKING BAY HAS BEEN BREACHED!' screamed a Dalek.
Davros gripped his wheelchair in fear. He was terrified, now. He couldn't imagine what was coming next...
Jake and Neytiri set about the controls, shutting the doors and setting the coordinates to Earth. Two friends of theirs were now dead, the casualties were not to be allowed to climb. They pulled a lever together, and the TARDIS made her familiar noise once more...
The rain coming down on Earth was increasing. Pieces of metal and debris crashed into Earth several times, and the city was distinctly on fire. All the Doctor, Seldon and Susan could do was run. That was, until...
WHOOOSH. WHOOOOSH.
The Doctor was thankful his TARDIS was still there. Norm and Trudy would be there, waiting to console him over the untimely deaths of—
'JAKE! NEYTIRI!' he shouted, running at the two aliens twice his height and hugging them around their waists.
'Where's Trudy and Norm?'
The two aliens looked rather sad. The Doctor's face fell.
'No...that's not...' he looked at the sky.
'And Norm?' He spotted the cloth-covered body.
'Martyrs.' Neytiri said.
The flames on board the Death Star grew, and then reached the ship. The ship, in reaction to catastrophic failure, activated a self-destruct. There was nothing but silence on board, apart from the ominous:
'TEN RELS. NINE RELS. EIGHT RELS. SEVEN...'
Trudy's body sort of floated in its seatbelts as the artificial gravity deactivated on the X-Wing. The belts broke open, and her face pressed up against the glass, pushing one of her eyes open. She blindly looked at the stars one last time, before her eye was forced shut as a jolt on board the Death Star forced her to float back into her seat.
'THE DALEK MOTHERSHIP IS ENDANGERED. WHAT ARE YOUR ORDERS?' asked a Dalek. Davros couldn't think right now. He didn't realise he only had another two seconds to make a decision. He held his head. He hadn't had a headache in years...
'...TWO RELS. ONE REL. ZERO RELS. RELEASING EXPLOSIVES.'
The Dalek Mothership vomited flames from the docking bay door, destroying everything on board it. The Death Star shook violently, even spinning slightly on its axis. The entire station burned through every crack and crevice.
'DAVROS, WE FORGOT THE PARADOX MACHINE!' shouted a Dalek in a very human tone.
Davros' eyes bulged. He began shaking violently. He looked at his hands in utter fear, whimpering the whole time.
They were dissolving. His hands were splitting apart, atom by atom, and every atom was fading from the universe. His entire body began splitting to pieces, the covalent carbon-based bonds between every ounce of his being falling apart. He looked around him. His soldiers, too, were disintegrating.
Davros screamed.
The Doctor looked at Hari and Susan as they began to fade away. He looked at the city as it began to return to its normal state.
'D-Doctor...what's happening to us?' asked Seldon, fearfully.
'You're going back to where you belong.'
'Will we ever see you again?' asked Susan.
'Possibly not.'
'Thank you, Doctor,' Seldon cheerfully uttered, as he became all but invisible. He and Susan smiled, leaving a last image for the Doctor.
'Doctor, what's happening?' asked Jake.
'That ship had a paradox machine on it. When a paradox machine is destroyed, all changes made under its power begin to reverse.'
'You mean...' said Neytiri, turning.
The cloth was moving...
The X-Wing around Trudy faded away. As the Death Star all but dissolved, Trudy floated in space for a few moments. Her body then disappeared without a trace. The moon came back firmly into place where she was, as a permanent reminder of her existence and being there.
The Planet Express Ship suddenly disappeared. All crew members felt rather odd as the massive spacecraft transcended time and space, the engine restarting, the dents correcting themselves, and the machine rerouted its course to Earth, New York, 3010.
'Good news, everyone!' Professor Farnsworth announced, 'Leela and the other jerkasses who feed off of my estate are back...'
The cloth came away from Norm's face.
'What...happened?' he muttered. 'Where's Trudy?'
'How does he remember her?' asked Jake.
'The universal damage must mean some things are still present and others are still past,' the Doctor speculated.
The others didn't notice Earth vanish around them as the TARDIS was forcibly moved away.
Alpha Centauri A formed out of the cloud of debris, in an almost reverse time-lapse, as everything was restored to how it should be. The TARDIS appeared and the Doctor opened the door to find the dead bodies of the Na'vi warriors waking up. The reversal had brought them all back to life, albeit where they had been originally standing at the time of their deaths in battle.
The Doctor laughed. Norm stumbled a few times, being dizzy. The warriors did the same, rubbing their heads. Jake and Neytiri looked into the distance to see Hometree returning to her former splendour. The entire world had almost been reborn. The Doctor was feeling an emotion of whimsy and amazement.
A Na'vi warrior felt a sharp prodding in his back and rolled over. He thought it was someone else, but then turned...and saw a small white stem.
'Irayo, Eywa!' he cried, calling several others over to look. Neytiri heard the calling and sprung over.
'Jake!' she shouted in excitement.
Jake and the Doctor ran over. The small white shoot was wiggling and twisting, getting taller.
'The Tree of Voices is growing back!' Neytiri yelled in excitement. Everyone stood up as the shoot became a trunk, and the trunk sprouted vines.
Neytiri clasped Jake in her arms as the vines made shade. The two connected their queues up to the vines, and listened to the voices of their ancestors congratulating them. Neytiri was sure she heard her father, Eytukan, say to her the Na'vi equivalent of:
'That's my girl.'
Trudy's body materialised inside her crashed Samson. A block of ice formed around her, sealing her into place once more. She was now at peace. Nothing was ever going to bother her or disturb her again. She was going to stay here and be preserved. Her final resting place.
Well, that was true right up until when the ice cracked. Trudy fell out of the wrecked helicopter, only for Norm to catch her.
'You're safe now,' he said, carrying her away.
The Doctor finished packing.
'Are you sure you don't want to stay?' asked Jake.
'Oh, no,' the Doctor replied. 'I have things to get on with.'
'Come on,' Neytiri insisted. 'Please?'
The Doctor thought. Well, a celebratory feast did sound nice.
'Well, OK, then,' he replied, closing the TARDIS doors. He ran off with the other two to the feast. This adventure had been a long one, he supposed a nice meal was a nice denouement.
Part of Pandora was enveloped in light. It had just turned its face towards the star Alpha Centauri A, one of the closest of Earth's neighbours. The beauty of the moon had been restored. Finally, after such a long time, it was all over. It was early morning for Pandora. The Doctor whistled to himself as he took off, the beautiful machine taking off.
Faintly, in the sky, a small dot of light winked away. The white hole disappeared. Once again, the universes were separate. The Doctor grinned widely as he flicked several switches. He tapped on a keyboard, turned two knobs, and pulled a lever. He then sat on the TARDIS sofa, closing his eyes as he listened to that noise...
WHOOSH.
WHOOSH.
WHOOSH.
WHOOSH...
All characters, settings, identities, names, space-time travelling vehicles of a certain blue nature, and other copyrights that have been used in this story are the property of their respective owners. I take no credit for the creation of these.