Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who

A/N: Hello! I had a nice birthday yesterday, got some nice presents, nothing too special – except a Nominations bracelet charm and an iPad Air, but hey, who cares about material things like that. LOL, anyway, on with the story!

Kill the Moon – Part Three

They all stared at her in disbelief and horror. "Why'd you want to kill it?" Clara demanded incredulously. From on the monitor, Courtney protested, "It's a little baby".

Lundvik was unmoved. "How do we kill it?" she questioned more firmly. Duke stepped forward and said, "Lundvik, just think about this. I know you're not keen on aliens but we can't just kill an innocent life like that". The time traveller's esteem of Duke increased dramatically upon hearing that. Lundvik, however, glared at him and insisted, "That thing is not innocent. It is killing people. It is destroying the earth".

"You cannot blame a baby for kicking" Clara objected. Lundvik turned to her and replied, "Let me tell you something. You want to know what I took back from being in space? Look at the edge of the Earth" she said, pointing out of a porthole, "The atmosphere, that is paper thin. That is the only thing that saves us all from death. Everything else, the stars, the blackness…That's all dead. Sadly, that is the only life any of us will ever know".

"That's not true!" Emily called from the monitor, "the universe is full of life! We know, we've seen it" she gestured to her family, who nodded in supportive agreement. Frustrated, Lundvik huffed, "Look, when you've grown up a bit, you'll realise that everything doesn't have to be nice. Some things are just bad. Anyway, it's none of your business".

Emily frowned at her. "Mum, dad, we're coming back" she said decisively. The Doctor shook his head immediately, and insisted, "Emily, you and Courtney will be safer where you are".

"No. We don't walk away, remember?" Emily reminded him, before looking at Courtney and saying, "Hold onto the console here. I'll get the CD with the programming to bring the TARDIS to my parents". With that she disappeared from the monitor screen. Your daughter, always helping Romana told the Doctor, who answered, You mean, our daughter, always helping.

Duke tried once more to convince Lundvik to reconsider. "There might be another option; they've been in space more than we have, they might know a way to free the alien and keep the moon from being destroyed".

"Then why haven't they done anything? Face it; they don't know what to do about this thing anymore than we do. We'll use the nuclear bombs – not even a giant alien could survive all of them going off at once".

"Are you even listening to yourself?" Romana demanded, "You are talking about murder. In fact, if this creature is really the only one of its kind, killing it would be genocide" she realised. How the woman could just calmly talk of destroying a new creature, one that didn't even realise what it was doing to the planet below it, Romana couldn't even comprehend.

"The nuclear bombs would work, technically speaking" the Doctor admitted in a devil's advocate sort of way, "Then the gravity of the little dead baby will pull all the pieces back together again. Of course, it won't be very pretty. You'd have an enormous corpse floating in the sky. You might have some very difficult conversations to have with your kids".

"I don't have any kids".

"We can see why" the Corsair remarked bluntly. Lundvik glared at him for the slight. Clara held her hands up and interjected, "Stop. Right, listen. This is a, this is a life. I mean, this must be the biggest life in the universe" she said, gesturing to the hologram of the baby Lunasaur. "That, right there, that should be proof enough that the universe isn't all dead. There's life right next door".

"Yes, and this life is destroying the planet!" Lundvik snapped in frustration. One alien life versus billions of human lives – of course she was going to choose the option that would save her home! Without looking at any of them, she set the red detonation pack down and opened it, starting to enter the code to start the countdown on the bombs. No-one, not Duke, not Romana, not Clara, none of them would convince her that this wasn't the right thing to do.

Clara turned to the Doctor and asked urgently, "So what do we do? Doctor, what do we do?" He seemed to be deep in thought, but when he heard the TARDIS materialising at last, he simply replied, "Nothing".

"What?"

"We don't do anything" he elucidated, gesturing to his co-pilots, "I'm sorry, Clara. We can't help you".

"Of course you can help".

"The Earth is not our home. The moon is not our moon" he insisted. Romana's brow furrowed; her husband was up to something, and she wanted to know what. "That never mattered to you before" she remarked levelly. The Doctor met her gaze, silently pleading with her to trust him. "We know there are moments in every civilisation's history in which the whole path of that civilisation is decided. All of the invasions, meteorite strikes, everything we prevented or stopped – none of those are as important as this choice, here and now".

He looked at Lundvik and Duke. "You've got the tools to kill it. You made them. You brought them up here all on your own, with your own ingenuity". And to Clara, "You don't need a Time Lord. Kill it. Or let it live. We can't make this decision for you" the Doctor insisted. Clara couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Well, I can't make it!"

"Well, there's four of you here".

"Well, yeah, a schoolteacher, a student and two astronauts".

"Who's better qualified?"

"I don't know! The President of America".

"Oh, take something off his plate. He makes far too many decisions anyway".

"She" Lundvik corrected.

"She, sorry; she hasn't even been into space. She hasn't been to another planet. How would she even know what to do?"

Clara turned to Romana and asked her, "You're not seriously going to abandon us here, are you?"

"Clara, you know I would never abandon you" Romana assured her, before turning to her husband and reminding him, "The last time you made a choice like this, it nearly destroyed you inside. Do you really think Clara is strong enough to cope with that?" she asked him. Normally she would have spoken such emotionally charged words telepathically, but it seemed better for now to be open.

"She won't need to" the Doctor replied confidently. The Corsair had to put in his two cents. "Look, I won't pretend that this isn't hard on Clara, but maybe the Doctor's right. Maybe this is one time when we shouldn't interfere".

"We can't just expect Clara and the others to shoulder that sort of burden" Flavia insisted, in a strange role reversal of her and the Corsair's usual stances on interfering. "Okay, how about whichever option Emily chooses is the deciding vote?" the Corsair suggested. All of the Time Quintet considered it briefly and nodded in agreement. "Okay, Emz, it's all up to you. Do we help or do we leave?" the Corsair asked her in his most serious voice, before adding, "No pressure".

"Hang on" said Duke, pointing at the TARDIS, "What about your machine? Can't you fix everything from in there?"

"No" the Doctor said firmly, "Some decisions are too important not to make on your own". He looked at Emily, who had her eyes shut tight in concentration. Moments later she looked around at them all, and gave her final verdict. "I don't think we can make this choice for them" she announced solemnly, much to Clara's distress, "but, I'm not going to leave either. Courtney is my honorary companion, Clara is honorary family, and family means nobody gets left behind, or forgotten…I watched Lilo and Stitch a few days ago".

"Well, in that case, I'm staying as well" Flavia decided. The Corsair rubbed the back of his neck and admitted, "Yeah, I'd feel like a pretty big jerk if I didn't at least stick around for, y'know, moral support".

The Doctor looked at Romana, but he didn't even need to ask her what she chose – he knew she'd stay with Emily. He would stay too, but he couldn't face Clara now. "Keep her safe" he told Romana, before turning his back on them and going into the TARDIS. Moments after it dematerialised, there was another moonquake. Outside, the germ spiders poured out of crevices old and new, swarming across the egg of the moon.

Lundvik, Clara, Duke and Courtney stood around the detonation pack. The remainder of the TARDIS Family stood to one side, beginning to doubt if they had made the right choice in staying. They knew why the Doctor wanted to let the humans make this decision about their species future for themselves, but it was still difficult to stand by and watch. Courtney glanced back at Emily, who gave her a supportive smile that didn't reach the young Time Lady's eyes.

"I'm going to detonate the bombs, agreed? Agreed?" Lundvik asked the others urgently – they were running out of time. Before Duke, Clara or Courtney could reply, there was yet another quake and the porthole broke. "Hold on tight, there's been a breach!" Lundvik yelled over the roar of rushing air, as they all grabbed onto the nearest available handhold and clung on for dear life. By lucky coincidence, the vacuum sucked a loose piece of metal over the hole, sealing it securely.

"If we let it live, what would happen if the moon wasn't there?" asked Clara when they'd picked themselves up. Lundvik insisted, "Listen, we haven't got time for this"-

"We're discussing it! What would happen if the moon wasn't there?"

"I have a physics book in my bag" Courtney piped up, trying to help, "There's this thing on gravity?"

"I think this might go beyond high school science" Duke muttered.

"Okay, there would be no tides" Clara reasoned, "But we'd survive that, right? They've knocked out the satellites. There's no internet, no mobiles. I'd be fine with that".

"It's not going to just stop being there" Lundvik insisted, "Because inside the moon, Miss, is a gigantic creature forcing its way out. And when it does, which is going to be pretty damn soon, there are going to be huge chunks of the moon heading right for us, like whatever killed the dinosaurs, only ten thousand times bigger".

"But the moon isn't made of rock and stone, is it? It's made of eggshell".

"Oh, God" Lundvik rolled her eyes, "Okay, okay, fine. If, by some miracle, the shell isn't too thick, or if it disperses, or if it goes into orbit, whatever; there's still going to be a massive thing there, isn't there, that just popped out. And what the hell do you imagine that is?"

"Lots of things lay eggs" Courtney pointed out. Lundvik rolled her eyes again. "It's not a chicken".

"I'm not saying it's a chicken. I'm not completely stupid" Courtney glowered at Lundvik, who ignored her and asserted, "It's an exo-parasite".

"You don't know that" Emily couldn't help but blurt out. The Lunasaur was an entirely new species, there was no way of knowing what it was, but she could tell it wasn't a parasite.

"Neither do you" Lundvik shot back.

"Well, parasite or not, it is still just a baby" Duke pointed out. Lundvik rounded on him and demanded, "Oh, you want to talk about babies? What about Alina?" she asked, and Duke's eyes widened slightly. "You have a granddaughter down there, Duke, a whole family. You want that thing to get out? Kill them all?"

Duke looked torn. Lundvik turned to Clara and questioned, "You want today to be the day life on Earth stopped because you couldn't make an unfair decision?"

Clara couldn't answer her. "Listen, I don't want to do this. All my life I've dreamed about coming here. But this is how it has to end" Lundvik maintained, setting the trigger. "Oi!" Courtney cried in protest. Lundvik spoke quickly before she could continue. "I've given us an hour. There's a cut-out here. If anyone has any bright ideas, or if their ride comes back, that stops it. But once it's pressed, it stays pressed".

"And if he doesn't come back?" asked Clara. Of course she knew the Doctor wouldn't abandon his wife and daughter to an exploding moon, but…would he abandon her to it? After all, he'd already abandoned her once.

"I didn't expect to survive anyway" Lundvik admitted. Courtney frowned worriedly and looked up at her teacher. "He's going to come back, though, right? Isn't he, Miss?"

Clara looked at Courtney, who had been remarkably brave all things considered, and suggested, "Hey, why don't you call me Clara?"

"I prefer Miss, Miss. We just need to make up our minds, that's all. He'll come back for them, and they won't leave without us" Courtney reasoned, pointing over at the Time Lords. None of them could look Clara in the eye, not even Emily. Clara sighed. "But they have left us" she murmured, too quietly for Courtney to hear. She appreciated them staying for 'moral support' as the Corsair had put it, but they were still leaving her to make this terrible decision alone.

Just then, the computer console crackled with static. "Can anybody hear me? Come in, please. Can anybody"-

"Lundvik" the captain identified herself, "and Duke". Her fellow astronaut waved from over her shoulder.

"This is ground control".

"Yeah, yeah, I can tell by your haircut. How are things down there?"

"Pretty bad, yeah, pretty bad. Listen, we're patched in to one of the TV satellites. We haven't got long. How are things up there?"

Just then, Clara had an idea. If humans had to make this choice alone, then it had to be the choice of all humanity, not just four of them. "Can we broadcast on this?" she asked. The ground control officer stared at her and Courtney in bewilderment. "Who are you?"

"School trip. Can we broadcast on this?"

"…Well, yes".

"Good. Patch us through to the whole world, please" Clara ordered. The officer, McKean, looked at Lundvik. She glanced at Clara, and then nodded. She and Duke stepped aside as Clara spoke to the human race, explaining the ultimatum. "We can kill this creature or we can let it live. We don't know what it's going to do, we don't know what's going to happen when it hatches. If it will hurt us, help us, or just leave us alone. We have to decide together.

"This is the last time we'll be able to speak to you, but you can send us a message. If you think we should kill the creature, turn your lights off. If you think we should take the chance, let it live, leave your lights on. We'll be able to see. Goodnight, Earth". With that, the transmission ended. Clara swallowed. "Was that okay?" she murmured to Courtney.

"Yeah"

There was a sudden bang, and the light flickered. Courtney reached over and took Clara's hand. Clara squeezed it as best as she could, and sighed. "Come on, let's see".

The four humans hurried down the corridor to find another porthole, Lundvik carrying the detonation pack – the Time Quartet remained behind. The moon trembled, the power fluctuated. Clara spotted a porthole and ran to it, looking out at the Earth with a small pair of binoculars that Duke handed to her. On the visible side of the world, a multitude of lights were turning off, making the glow of the cities spotted and dotted with patches of black and pinpricks of light. The countdown was at thirty five minutes.

Except that the world was round, and only now did Clara realise that they couldn't see what people on the other side had chosen. They didn't have time to wait until the planet had rotated enough to see the full vote. Clara struggled not to panic. They were right back to square one. Should she save the baby and risk dooming the Earth? Or kill it and live with the guilt of genocide on her conscience? Dammit, what had the Doctor meant, she wouldn't have to? How could she not have to?

The countdown reached five minutes, and nearly every light on the side of the Earth facing them had gone out. "Night, night" Courtney murmured sadly. Clara shook her head desperately and explained "We can't see the other side. I made a mistake, we can't choose based on this".

"Well, we can't risk it all just to be nice, either" Lundvik retorted. Clara hesitated, and ran down the corridor back to the Time Quartet. She didn't look at any of them – she couldn't. Her mind was racing, her heart thumping...both sides of the argument warring in her head. "Please come back now" she whispered a prayer to the Doctor, but of course there was no response.

"Miss?" Courtney asked in concern, but her teacher didn't reply. She glanced at Emily, who mouthed 'I'm sorry' and looked away in shame.

"Nine seconds" Lundvik warned them. Courtney rounded on her in desperation. "You can't!"

"Sorry, kid" Duke apologised, "But this is how it's gotta be".

"See you on the other side" Lundvik told him, and he nodded sadly. It looked like he wouldn't get home to his family after all. The countdown reached two – and then Clara leapt forwards, hitting the cut-out switch. 'Detonation Aborted' the screen displayed, and she sagged in relief.

"Hey!" Lundvik cried in protest, but before she could even think about resetting the timer, the TARDIS began to dematerialise.