Author's Note: Just a suggestion, when the time feels right, feel free to play "I am the Doctor" as the climax arrives.
Chapter Eleven
Living creatures aren't meant to entire the Time Vortex unaided. That is why Vortex Manipulation is so uncomfortable. So when three sentient beings plunged into the Untempered Schism, they experienced a little more than just pain.
It was like being ripped apart from their very core. The winds of time were tearing what didn't belong, trying to spread the anomaly across time.
The three friends whirling freely through the vortex were experiencing the same sensation. Rapid aging forward followed by aging towards youth. Every cell of their body undergoing rapid mitosis. A thousand different cancers raptured along their beings. Death flashed along their bodies and then…
The Doctor, Rose, and Amy all found themselves deposited on a plane of blackness.
"Ah," the Doctor cracked his neck. "That's better. Okay, we're not dead. That's good. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, fine." said Rose, looking down at where moments previously she had seen the skin of ninety year old.
"Peachy." Murmured Amy.
They had arrived at their intended destination. It was the same as the last time they had been there, only hours in Rose and Amy's relative time. They were standing within darkness that shrouded the Earth. They couldn't see far in any direction. All around them was the almost solid gas of the Porigath. The surface below their feet was like glass. They could see the same black smoke that seemed covered the Earth as last time, however this time the gaps in the darkness were much fewer.
"The Porigath have almost completely taken over the Earth. We have minutes." The Doctor remarked, looking at the precious few spots that were not covered in the Porigath's darkness.
Amy looked around the area. Nothing. Amy was not sobbing any more. In fact, she wasn't even sad about her doctor being taken away from her. She was angry. Unfortunately for the Porigath, they had yet to meet an angry Scottish girl.
"Oi! Porigath! Where are you? You have something I want."
Silence.
"Hey! Did you hear me? Give me my Doctor!"
A low rumble. Like laughter. In fact, it was laughter. It sounded like an earthquake, the laugh. It shook the glass-like plane Amy was standing on.
"Hello, Amelia Williams."
Behind the group of three, the blackness gathered. At first it seemed like a cloak wrapping around a person. Then it took form. The form of the Eleventh Doctor.
Staring hard at her best friend, Amy rebutted stiffly, "Its Pond, you moron."
"Oh, you've forgotten? Oh, we see now. It is taking a while to sort through your dead friends memories."
"Shut up. Shut your stupid ugly face."
The Porigath made Eleven give Amy a mocking look. "It is not our face. Hmm. So you've forgotten all about the man you were going to marry?"
"I don't know what you are talking about." Amy's face was getting redder.
"Oh, but it looks like he died. And disappeared. In some…crack…?"
Amy lost it. Raising her fist, still red from kicking zombie ass, she swung her arm towards the Porigath-possesed face of the Doctor.
Where her first should have landed, there was smoke. The Doctor's entire face was smoke. However, a large, cold scream was emitted, not from the Doctor's mouth, but seemingly from everywhere.
Amy withdrew. She hadn't expected to actually cause the Porigath any pain.
The Tenth Doctor stepped up to Amy's side, staring on at the writing figure of his successor. "What did you do?"
"I don't know, I just hit them. I didn't even make contact."
The Doctor considered this. He thought about the readheaded girl he knew so little about. What had the next Doctor said about her? Something about her remembering. And something else. A crack?
"What was that I said earlier? The other me, about a crack in the wall?"
Amy looked extremely puzzled. "Um, when I was a little girl there was a crack in my wall. But the Doctor closed it."
"What was the crack? What did I tell you it was?"
"You said it was a crack in spacetime. Two parts of time and space that should never have touched, squeezed together."
"Now, what could have enough energy to cause that?" Mulled the Doctor. "Well, I suppose I'll find out, eventually. But if this is true, then that means, you've had all o space and time poured into your head."
"Yeah, so?"
"So? So, you're an anomaly! The Porigath, this whole thing was an attempt for them to take control of space and time. As they assert their control over time, anomalies like you could be fatal to them."
"It doesn't matter," announced the Porigath, seeming to have recovered. "She touched us. Now she is ours."
And the familiar blackness spread along Amy's skin. She was taken by the same force that had taken her Doctor. All too soon, the blackness had completely overtaken her and she became a pile of ashes.
Dead.
The tremor of laughter surged again around Ten and Rose.
"You've lost, Lord of Time. After centuries of adventure, you've finally been brought to your knees. After all you've done, this is the best you can do?"
"No. Bur I think you should be very, very careful when messing with time." The Doctor gritted his teeth. He brought Rose close to his side, protecting her like a man would his lover. "See, you haven't won. You can't erase the Earth completely, so long as Rose and I still remain. And if we remain, you cannot win."
"A temporary victory." Tendrils of the black smoke emerged from the Porigath's body. "We can quickly rectify that."
The Doctor brought Rose closer and whispered in her ear. "I'm sorry."
"I'm here with you." Rose whispered back. Biting her lip she brought her face close to the Doctor's ear, "Doctor, I lo-"
Vworp Vworp
The Doctor opened a single eye. "No. That isn't possible. I check the TARDIS before we left."
Rose opened her eyes as well. "Doctor. Behind the Porigath."
"The TARDIS shut down. In a world that erased and blocked off from the rest of the universe, the TARDIS had no power supply to draw on."
Behind the hollow body of the Eleventh Doctor, a blue police box materialized into being. The cloister bell echoed of the facsimile glass ground and bounced of the wall of darkness. The TARDIS solidified completely and fell silent.
When the echo finished bouncing around the area, all that remain was silence. The tendrils that had threatened to consume the Doctor and Rose had paused as the Porigath used the Eleventh Doctor's body to face the recently materialized TARDIS. The Doctor and Rose moved apart slightly, although Rose remained close by the Doctor's side. The air was still, bar the smoke that hovered slightly. The Porgiath, the Doctor, and Rose were all completely silent as the stared on at the blue box.
With a creaking noise, the TARDIS doors slowly opened. From it emerged a tall man, with broad arms and shoulder. His eyes were old, but the rest of his body appear youthful. His face was lean, with hawk-like eyes and ears that ended in a near point. He had a thin beard and hair that cascaded just below his ears.
"You hair…" The Doctor's mouth hung down in awe. "You're ginger!"
"Yes. I am. Thank you for noticing." The man with the box said.
The Porigath narrowed their host's eyes. "Who are you?"
The man wobbled down from the TARDIS. In a slightly higher pitched voice than average, the man said, "I don't quite know yet. Let's find out, shall we?"
The man pushed the hat atop his head back slightly. "I do apologize for my appearance. Grabbed the first thing I found in the TARDIS."
The man's dress was certainly strange. Along his shoulders he wore a long, black cutaway coat that descended down below his buttocks. He wore a white, puffy shirt and a velvet red waistcoat. Around his neck was an ascot tie. His equestrian pants were a similar color to his waistcoat and ascended just over his waist. His feet were capped off in Hessian boots, and the hat atop his head was a bowler hat.
"Who are you?" repeated the Porigath.
"Well, let us see. From my clothes, we can tell I don't have much fashion sense. The creases in my brow suggests intelligence, or otherwise consternation. I'm gorgeous, obviously."
Rose laughed and the Doctor grinned.
The man smiled back, "And if my friends are any indication, I've certainly got a sense of humor. Good, I like it when that happens. But as for who I am," the man's eye narrowed as his eyes rested on the reanimated body of the Eleventh Doctor, "I'm the person who will save this planet and these planet." The man flourished his hat down from head and with a sweep of his coat tails presented himself. "I am the Doctor! Or, the other Doctor, if you will."
"What? How? Impossible!" declared the Porigath
"Oh, is this the part where I explain what happened?" the Other Doctor smirked cheekily, "What say you, Doctor? Would you like to know what's going on?"
"Ah, hold on, let me get out my brainy specs." The Tenth Doctor fumbled as he retrieved a pair of rectangular glasses from his coat pocket. "Please, continue."
"You see, the Porigath here wanted to rewrite time so that the Doctor, us, never left our home world and Earth didn't exist." The Other Doctor began.
"But they were unsuccessful," continued Rose, beginning to understand slightly, "because the only way they could completely erase the Earth is if they erased everyone on it and the Doctor himself."
"Right, because if the Doctor of this timeline wasn't erased, then he Porigath could not assert mastery over time." The Other Doctor said. "So what happened was because the Earth was completely cut off from the rest of the world, instead of created an alternate timeline, the Porigath unintentionally created an entire a parallel universe!"
"Oh!" the Tenth Doctor smacked his hand against his forehead, "Oh! Oh, you are good. We are really, exceptionally brilliant!"
"What is this Doctor? What have you done?"
"I haven't done anything. You separated the Earth from the rest of the universe. While the Earth was no longer a part of the universe, it was impossible to alter our universes timeline! So, an alternate universe was created." The Tenth Doctor exclaimed.
"Yes, and because you had the Doctor trapped in this non-universe Earth when the alternate universe was created, I retained the memories of my life, and the Doctor of this universe's life. Of course, the sudden split in timelines caused me to regenerate and for a while, I had trouble accessing my memories. But, well, obviously I got them back, after some time." The Other Doctor lazily walked around the Porigath, "And in my universe, the Time Lords still exist, so travelling between universes was possible. And, unlike my fellow here's TARDIS, mine is still functional because it is connected to my universe."
Although all three triumphant people seemed confidant, the Porigath used their body to smile.
"So? This changes nothing. Now that you are here I can kill you and your universe."
"Yeah, I suppose you could. In fact, if you have some crayons and construction paper, I can draw out some devilishly fun ways you can kill us. But it won't work. You see, you were created as a result of the destruction of the Time Lords and Gallifrey. However, if you were in a universe where the Time Lords were still alive, you couldn't continue to exist. But first," the Other Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the Porigath, "I think you have some people you need to return to us."
The screwdriver glowed red and a loud pulsing sound emitted from the cylindrical device. The Eleventh Doctor's body spasmed and his pupil turned from black to its natural white.
"No. Impossible!"
"Oh, very possible. You used potential energy to erase people, so unless everything is erased, these people can come back. And, using a little energy from my universe, I can bring them back."
The blackness receded from the Eleventh Doctor's face and soon disappeared from the rest of his body. The Eleventh Doctor was restored to all of his former glory. He stood frozen for a moment before realizing he was alive. His breath then began to pump rapidly as he stumbled where he stood.
"Wha-? I'm-I'm back! I'm alive!" The Eleventh Doctor pressed his hands against his hearts. "Ha ha! I did not expect to live this time." He remarked as if talking about a pair of trousers he wore yesterday. His hand moved rapidly to his neck and the Eleven sighed a visible sign of relief. "Oh, bowtie. Cool. I was worried there for a second. So, what's going on? How did my brilliant self get me out of this one?"
"The Porigath accidently created an alternate universe instead of an alternate timeline. Created another version of you who used energy from his universe to combat the Porigath's potential energy and freed" Rose summarized with a surprising amount of joy.
"Oh, that makes sense. The Eleventh Doctor nodded as he looked towards the Other Doctor and his TARDIS.
Rose raised an eyebrow. "It does?"
"Oh!" The Eleventh Doctor swaggered right up to the Other Doctor and started to run his hands through his counterpart's hair. "And he's ginger this one! Oh that is…so cool."
"I know, I love it." The Tenth Doctor laughed.
"Speaking of gingers—where's Pond?"
"Right there." The Other Doctor extended his sonic screwdriver once more. The black smoke began to swirl and a fully redhead, fully Scottish, fully loud Amy Pond reformed before their eyes.
"Ha ha! Amelia!" The Eleventh Doctor ran to his companion and began to pull her into an embrace.
Smack!
Eleven rubbed his reddening cheek, "Oi, what was that for?"
Amy said sternly, "That was for leaving me to think you were dead. And this," Her face then softened and she accepted the Doctor's hug, "is for coming back."
"Oh, Pond." The two friends embraced. "Hand to Rassilon, I will never let you think I am dead again."
"Mhm." Amy grunted incredulously.
"ENOUGH!" The black smoke that surrounded them seemed to pulse as the Porigath smoke. "You are all here together now. You all die, now."
"Oh, weren't you listening? You can only exist in a universe where the Time Lords are gone. You will die in my universe." The Other Doctor lectured.
"But we are not in your universe, Time Lord."
"Oh, right can't forget this bit." The Other Doctor pulled up his sleeve to reveal a small communicator strapped to his wrist. "Clara? If you could activate the TARDIS?"
"On it." A female voice emerged from the communicator.
The light atop the Other Doctor's TARDIS began to flash, but it didn't dematerialize. Instead, a few meters next to it another blue box began to materialize into view.
"That's my TARDIS!" announced Ten
"And mine!" cried Eleven
"It wasn't working, we were cut off from the universe," The Tenth Doctor mulled as he reached his conclusion, "but you powered it using your TARDIS and the energy form your universe."
"Correct." The Other Doctor smiled.
The door to Ten's TARDIS opened and a diminutive brunette stepped out. "Got the TARDISes, Doctor."
"What is the meaning of this?"
"Porigath this is my new friend, Clara." The Other Doctor said with a flourish of his arm.
"I'll kill her as well."
"I don't think so," said the brunette, Clara, "see the thing with me is, I'm really good with computers. Even crazy alien computers, it seems. So when you threaten my planet and my friends, then you should watch out."
The lights on the three TARDISes continued to glow. All three of the doors on the time machines flung open unaided and twinkling golden light of energy poured out."
"No." the Tenth Doctor said in amazement. "She can't have."
"Doctor?" Rose inquired.
"With the Doctor's help, I've synced the matrices of the three TARDISes. Since they are the same TARDIS from parallel universe, it is causing a paradox; the same kind of paradox the Porigath created to erase Earth and humanity." Clara said smugly.
"No." the Porigath said in fear.
"Think of it like antimatter." The Other Doctor said. The golden light of the paradox spread out from the TARDISes and began to erase the blackness. As soon as the golden light came into contact with the Porigath blackness, it destroyed it. "If you, the Porigath are matter, than the matter from my universe acts like antimatter. As soon as the particles of my universe come into contact with you—it will annihilate you."
The blackness began to recede over the Earth below. Towns and people once dead popped back in existence. Where the Doctors stood, the central consciousness of the Porigath was under the same attack. As it began to dissipate, a great gust of wind generated that blew strongly through the apparent victors.
"Stop, Doctor! I command to you to cease!" the Porigath screamed.
"This isn't your world anymore!" The Tenth Doctor yelled above the wind.
"The people of this world are safe again. And we will do anything to keep it that way." declared the Eleventh Doctor.
Rose smirked at the darkness and launched a final bout of insults. "You ain't so tough, are you? If I was able to fly a dying TARDIS through you, you can't be that powerful."
Amy swung a fist towards the blackness, which certainly would have screamed in pain at the anomaly if it wasn't already projecting a thunderous shriek.
"DOCTOR!" The Porigath screamed one final time and then they were gone.
The Earth below them resumed being. Above them, space opened up as the Earth and its occupants rejoined the universe. The sun, foreign to them after weeks of captivity, beat down on their battered bodies.
For a while, all was silence.
"So," Rose was the first to break the silence. "we've won, then?"
"Yes." said the Eleventh Doctor.
"Will they remember, the people on the Earth?" asked Rose.
"I shouldn't think so. Those who were erased will have no recollection. The small number that remained at the end will be dismissed as nutters. Besides, relative to the rest of the universe, the Earth has only been gone for a couple of hours. The people maybe be a bit confused when it is dark when last they remember it was midday, but other than that, it will be like they never left" explained the Tenth Doctor
Eleven looked down at the glass-like surface below their feet. "We better go, this ground is going to disappear soon as the world fully reintegrates."
All of the Doctors walked towards Ten's TARDIS. Rose pointed to the Other Doctor. "What do we do about him?"
Ten folded his glasses and put them back into his jacket pocket. "Well, I suppose there is nothing to do. He'll return to his universe and the walls between his world and ours will reseal."
"Thank you," Amy was the first to shake the Other Doctor's hand, "for the whole saving us, and all."
"Yes, very good." The Eleventh Doctor nodded, shaking the Other Doctors hand; the others soon followed suit.
The Other Doctor walked to the doors of his TARDIS and ran his hand down the side of the door. "I better go before the walls between our worlds reseal. Unles," The Other Doctor stepped into the open doors and turned his head back to his short confederate, "you want to come with me?
Clara's eyes grew wide and she stepped forward towards the Other Doctor. As she stood on the threshold of staying or leaving, she turned to the Eleventh Doctor and remarked, "I would be dead, I suppose. I would be still alive in a parallel universe, but to my friends and family…I'll be dead."
The Eleventh Doctor cast his face downwards. He knew the negative direction this conversation was going in and said in just above a whisper, "Yes. Yes, I suppose you will be."
The woman looked down to the Earth and back to her ginger Doctor. She grinned widely and stepped into the TARDIS. "Well, then," entering the Other Doctor's TARDIS, she swung her around and looked directly into the Eleventh Doctor's eyes, "Run. Run you clever boy…and remember."
The Eleventh Doctor nodded.
Clara wrapped her arm around the Other Doctor and swung him into the TARDIS with her. With a last bittersweet grin at the Doctors of this universe, the Other Doctor joined Clara and began to walk with her.
"So, where too, Doctor?"
"Have you ever been to Barcelona? Not the city Barcelona, the planet Barcelona. You'll love it, fantastic place…" and the TARDIS door slammed shut on the pair.
As the Other Doctor's TARDIS dematerialized, the Eleventh and Tenth Doctors turned to each other for their own final goodbyes.
"Doctor, I cannot tell you what a pleasure it has been." The Eleventh Doctor clasped the Tenth Doctor's hand in his.
"Neither can I." The Tenth Doctor bent in a short bow, "To the days come."
The Eleventh Doctor gave a small, almost sad smile. "All my love to long ago."
As the Doctor exchanged farewells, their companions did similar.
Amy murmured in Rose's ear so that the Doctors could not hear them, "You love him, don't you."
Rose nodded slowly.
"He'll come around. I can tell."
Rose grinned and brushed the thought aside with a swipe of her hand. "It's okay. You take care of him. Where ever I am in your Doctors time, I'm obviously not with him. So just…take care of him, will you?"
"I will. And you," Amy raised her voice to a normal level and ran her hand down the Tenth Doctor's chest. "If you are ever in Leadworth, look me up."
The Tenth Doctor laughed. "Yeah, perhaps."
"Rose," the Eleventh Doctor took his former companion's hand. "Just so you know, I was serious what I said before. I haven't forgotten you. And I never will."
Rose nodded and squeezed the Eleventh Doctor's hand briefly before letting go.
"C'mon, Rose. More planets to save." The Tenth Doctor said, heading back to his own TARDIS.
"Coming, Doctor." Rose replied.
As Rose walked into the TARDIS, the Doctor thought back to when they were certain they were about to die and asked, "What was that you were saying earlier? When we were about to die?"
Rose blushed. "Oh, er…I was just saying that I-I've loved traveling with you."
"Oh, you too Rose." The Doctor said, grinning. "So, I was thinking for our next trip…"
And the doors shut on them and they, too, were gone.
"Right then, Pond. Ready?"
Amy stepped after the Doctor. They both entered the TARDIS and the doors sealed shut behind them. The TARDIS began to dematerialize.
"Where to now, Doctor?"
"Oh, lovely little spot. I thought that after an adventure like that we could use a relxing trip to the Fifth Moon of Cindie Colesta. Oh, but first," The Doctor took out his psychic paper and, using his sonic screwdriver, wrote down a message. "There. 'Temple of the Thine. Bring former Doctor along.' That message will go to me and the past and set us on our way."
"Isn't that another paradox?" asked Amy.
"No. Well, maybe. Frankly, I'm not all that worried about it." said the Doctor as the TARDIS rematerialized.
The Doctor stuck his head out of the TARDIS door and looked around. "No, Amy, it's definitely not the Fifth Moon of Cindie Colesta. I think I can see a Ryman's." The Doctor began to step out of the TARDIS, but was bucked out by an unknown force. The TARDIS had begun to dematerialize again.
"Amy!" The Doctor rolled over to get back up only to see the TARDIS fade away, "Amy!"
ONE DAY LATER
The Doctor rang the doorbell to the flat. After a short moment of waiting, a rather bulbous Craig Owens stepped out of the door and said, "I love you…"
"Well that's good 'cause I'm your new lodger. D'you know?" The Doctor smiled and grabbed the keys from the man at the door. "This is going to be easier than I expected…"
END.
Author's note: Well, that's it! I hope you guys enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Thanks for everything!