Thank you Guest for reminding me about Davros and the handmines; I added in a brief thing about that. Doctor Who is weird with what causes a paradox and what doesn't, so I'm sorry about all the random handwaving I do-no matter what I choose, there will be something that contradicts it. And I was really worried about posting last chapter; I hope I didn't scare anyone off. Thank you to everyone who's still reading this!

Disclaimer: .. -.. - -. - - - .- -. -.. - -.-. - - .-. .- ... -

Chapter 22: Revelation of the Storm

The Doctor was dead. Somehow, the Doctor was dead, and he wasn't moving, and he was dead. His eyes stared up at the night, glassy and lifeless as he lay on the ground. He wasn't regenerating. No, no, no, no, no!

Then the Dalek's headlamps lit up as it spoke.

"EXTERMINATE!"

"I do not understand. They are enemies of the Daleks!" The Dalek said. What?

Dalek Sec, he's talking to Dalek Sec. "Hooverville may not be classy, but we defend our own!" Solomon said, lining up a shot with his rifle.

"Stop!" April warned Solomon. "He might leave." Pease, please, please have him leave. It can't all be lost; the Doctor's not dead, he's not dead, he's just pretending.

"Whaddya mean he might leave?" Tallulah asked. No one answered her question.

"He's just pretending," April whispered to herself. "He's just pretending, he's just pretending, he's just pretending."

The campsite was burning, orange light dancing through April's vision. Burning, burning away, as the Doctor lay there, cold, unmoving. Why wasn't he burning, too, orange energy pouring forth as he regenerated into Eleven?

Because he was regenerating. He was regenerating, and then the Dalek shot him. And not even a Time Lord can survive that.

"The urge to kill is too strong!" Announced the Dalek, eyestalk twitching. Then… "I obey!" The Dalek glided off through the air, and the pigmen retreated.

"Are they going?" Asked Tallulah.

"Yes," Harriet said.

Solomon stared at the pigmen in shock as they fled. Then, he regained his hold over himself. "Michael—both Smith and Cavendish, Thomas Green, Mark, Ronald Graves, Jethro, Harry. Get some water on the fires!" Those men ran off, finding buckets to pour on the burning tents. "Seamus, Donald Smith, Alison and David White, James, Kevin Taylor. Keep a watch, make sure those monsters don't go coming back. You hear me?" They nodded, eyes burning even brighter and with even more fury than the tents. "Rest of you—help the wounded!"

Martha ran over to the Doctor, desperately feeling for a heartbeat. Harriet and April followed, watching as she tried to do CPR.

"He can't be dead," Harriet said. Her eyes were red, bloodshot from tears that had never fallen. "If he's dead, then the future wouldn't exist."

"Time can be rewritten," April said hollowly.

Martha looked up, her voice shaking. "He's gone. He's just…gone. I can't believe it."

"It's a trick," April said quietly. "It's got to be…some sort of trick, or something. Like he did in—" The Big Bang, April finished inside her head. Can't say anything with Martha here.

"I'm sorry, he's dead," Martha said, taking his pulse. "There's nothing we can do. Those creatures, those Daleks…"

"We're dead," April said. "We're all dead, we're going to fade. Like in Back to the Future, we're going to fade out of existence."

"No," Martha told her. "The Daleks. There's three of us, we can stop them, can't we?"

"They're Daleks," April said in disgust. "And we're humans. Smart humans, determined humans, but humans all the same. We can't win without the Doctor."

"Well," Martha said, after a moment, "if you want to sit here and talk about the end of the world, then do it. But I'm going to try to defeat them. And I know you can help."

"We. Can't. Do. Anything!" Harriet said, throwing up her hands in the air.

"Yeah, right. The two of you know things—don't pretend you don't. You're always whispering away. And whatever the Doctor was doing before the Dalek shot him again, you knew that too. Maybe I can't win. I probably can't. But you could help. And if we die, and you don't do everything you can, then it will be your fault," Martha said, narrowing her eyes. "They need medical help, these people, and I'm the only doctor left anymore. Just think about it." She strode off to talk to Solomon.

April looked around. The campsite wasn't burning, anymore, but the Doctor still lay on the ground, limp. Dead. The Doctor was dead, dead for real, and it wasn't a trick. The two girls stared at the sky for a minute.

"There's got to be something for us to do," April said.

"There's nothing."

"I'm supposed to be the pessimist, not you," April pointed out. "Where's the optimism?"

"The Dalek-Humans will be purely Dalek. It's…it'll be a massacre, April. And somehow, we made this happen."

"Solomon," April said quietly. "I think the Human-Dalek one was supposed to feel remorse for his death. It took a death for him to realize how evil the Daleks were, except this time it was the Doctor's instead of Solomon's. And it's my fault."

"You didn't know," Harriet said immediately.

"I did," April said. "I didn't know that…that this would happen, but I knew it was a bad idea. Something inside me was screaming to stop, and I didn't listen to it."

"It's not your fault," Harriet maintained. "You tried to fix something, make something better. You have no idea how much I wanted to help him—I would've helped too, if I wasn't such a coward." She snorted in disgust. "Never thought I'd be standing by when people needed help."

"I'm still responsible," April disagreed. "Even if I meant well, I still caused this." Her shoulders slumped.

Come on, you're going to just give up?

Time's being rewritten as we speak. The Daleks will destroy the Earth and move onto the Universe. Without the Doctor to stop them, they'll succeed. Martha will be erased from existence. Jeremy Rice will too, which means we'll die back on New Earth—if New Earth even exists. Maybe, maybe, the paradox will work itself out and we'll live. Probably. Time's got a high amount of plasticity. But a world without the Doctor. A universe ruled by the Daleks. It's likely to cause an insane amount of paradoxes. Rose Tyler—she'll never have existed. Those theories that all the issues in Father's Day were partially due to the effect on Bad Wolf? Well, this will also affect Bad Wolf. A lot. Or maybe Twelve won't be able to save Davros and the Daleks will never exist…but that's before the Time War, and since the universe doesn't seem broken, I don't think it will work like that. We've lost. Anyone who says different is fooling themselves.

April would have smiled at the Harry Potter reference if not for the dire circumstances.

No. No, if…if time's breaking down anyway, that means we can do whatever. Whatever we want, just fix it.

"Alright," April said. "She's right. Martha's right. We can't just do nothing, we have to try."

Harriet smiled. "You got a plan?"

"You kidding me? I have a thing, and that's far better than a plan." April began to pace around, trying to think. "Stop the Daleks. Okay, that's easy, isn't it? Well, not easy. But easier than fixing the Doctor. No. First things first, question one. A. No, let's go with question one, so that we can use a and b for different parts of it. Question One. What happens if the Doctor doesn't survive? Assume we survive this episode, fix everything up."

"What's after this? I think it's the Lazarus Experiment."

"Easy," April said. "Well, if we can somehow pilot the TARDIS back to Earth. Mind you—might not be that hard. There's probably a security protocol to take us back to Martha's time in case he dies. And we can get UNIT's help."

"We can't use our knowledge!" Harriet protested. "It might destroy the universe, remember?"

"And the Daleks won't?" April shook her head. "We've got to use every advantage we have. Lazarus Experiment—we can stop him with the whole Bell Tower thing. People of 42 will have to just die. Human Nature and Family of Blood won't happen. Blink…well, we can try to trick them, but if we don't, nothing crazy will happen. Utopia and the finale just won't happen either. Right. We can do that. Season Four—Voyage of the Damned…can you think of anything? Except Torchwood's thing from Turn Left, that is."

Harriet shook her head, eyes wide.

"Me neither. But if we do survive, well, the Adipose will just happen. No one will stop Fires of Pompei. We won't be able to time travel; we'll all just die."

"Would we come back to life, then?" Harriet asked. "Since this didn't happen?"

"I don't think so," April said. "Well, maybe, like with Rory, but I doubt it. Right. So, carrying on is not an option. We're not British. Question two is how we can revive the Doctor. Assets—well, we've got everyone in Hooverville to help us, we've got Martha Jones, we've got our knowledge. Um…TARDIS, we've got the TARDIS. Anything else?"

"I can't think of anything."

"Well, then, that's our list. And we're going to find an answer," April said, smiling. Somehow, she was beginning to enjoy this. "Pretend we're the writers. We wrote our characters into this mess, and now we're going to write them out of it. Just because we can't see a way out yet doesn't mean that there isn't one. And you know what the benefit of us being the metaphorical writers is?" She didn't even know what she was doing anymore, but the words kept pouring out, one after another. There was a solution up ahead—she could feel it. April was in the middle of a proof, one conclusion leading to another, and the pieces were starting to come together as she raced towards the final answer.

"No," Harriet said.

"It's because think about it. The show's called Doctor Who. And the Doctor's not going to die for real mid-season. So, end result is that every one of the main cast lives. We just have to get there. And we can assume that we're going to win. We've got all these things, and we can use them however it's possible. Leave aside satisfaction of narrative, we will do whatever it takes to revive the Doctor. I mean, think of how many things were forgotten because they'd immediately solve the plot of most episodes? Well, we don't care about viewer disappointment—whatever we've got, we can use. We're going to munchkin the…we're going to munchkin this."

"Karn!" Harriet said immediately, her eyes lighting up.

"Karn?" April asked.

"Karn," Harriet nodded. "Just an idea. If we could get the TARDIS there, they would revive the Doctor!"

"Good one," April said. "Any clue how we could do it, though, and whether we could convince them to help? Also, is Karn tied to Gallifrey? Like, was it also fake blown up by the Moment? Is it also trapped in a parallel—sorry, pocket universe?"

"I'm…not sure. Sorry, that was an awful idea."

"No it wasn't," April reassured her. "It's got some problems, yeah. It's an idea, still, and ideas are good."

"It won't work," Harriet said. "Who knows if they even would revive him? Even can? They might not get to him in time, or whatever. I just…there might not be a way out, April. It's not a story."

"It is," April insisted. "We're the writers, and we're going to find a solution."

"What are you even talking about?" Martha asked from behind them.

"Martha?" Harriet said, surprised. "How long've you been listening?"

"Since you started talking about somewhere called Karn," Martha said. Her face was set with determination. "I knew you knew way more than you were letting on. If this Karn is the only solution, how do we get there?"

"I'm…I'm not sure we can," April said. "I doubt it. Well, I'd put the probability at getting there at about point zero zero one percent, probably less."

"We should focus on first things first," Martha said. She leant over the Doctor and picked up his sonic screwdriver and sonic paper from the mud. "Stop the Daleks."

"The Doctor stops them by getting non-Dalek DNA mixed in with the Dalek," Harriet said quietly.

"What do you mean?" Martha asked. "He's dead."

"We're…oh, just go with it," April said. "Please."

"For all I know, you work with the Daleks," Martha pointed out.

"Just trust us, for a bit," Harriet said.

Martha watched them for a moment, before nodding. "Right. Don't think I have much of a choice, anyway. What do you know about whatever experiment the Daleks are doing?"

"I know how to stop it," Harriet said. "DNA gets mixed in with the lightning strike…Time Lord worked…but human could also work too."

"But we'd die!" April protested. "If someone grabbed ahold of spire it would work, but they'd die."

"Yes," Harriet said. She turned to look at the Empire State Building. "I'll do it."

NO. It was the same part of her that had warned her not to save Solomon, that had been feeling uneasy about this the entire day. This time, you have to listen. "No."

"We have to," Harriet said quietly. "Or else everyone dies."

"No, it won't work," April told her, absolutely certain. Her eyes glazed over as she stared into the distance. "The Daleks would kill you before you reached the spire. Martha would die facing Dalek Sec; he wouldn't…he wouldn't be good." April didn't know where it came from, but the words poured out. Somehow, she knew they were true.

"You don't know that," Martha said. "You're not psychic or something." She paused. "Are you?"

"I've just got a feeling."

"It's the best plan we've got," Harriet said, "and we can't throw it away on a feeling."

"Time's breaking down, Daleks are taking over the universe, and we're literally inside of a fictional television show. Sorry, Martha, just ignore that. Any strange feelings we get, we've got to listen to them."

"I've got a strange feeling that we're going to die if we wait any longer," Harriet said. "I'll save us. You've got to do the 'baptize them' speech. Then take the Doctor to Karn. Okay?"

"No!" April said immediately. "There is another way to fix this."

"What?" Martha asked.

"Well, I don't know precisely¸ but it doesn't really matter yet, does it? We're the writers of Doctor Who, Harriet. That's what we're pretending, at least. And we…we are in the RTD era." She was almost there. Just one more leap.

"The what?" Martha said.

"Which means," April continued, "there's a big shiny red button that should never be pressed unless it's a season finale."

"A reset button?" Harriet asked.

April felt herself grin. "The infamous RTD reset button."

"I can't think of any way for us to reset this," Harriet said.

"Well, it's the perfect solution. Prevent the problem from having ever happened. We don't have a paradox machine to turn off, but…there's another option!" April realized.

"A what machine?" Martha asked. "Wait a second—you're acting like the Doctor with an idea."

Déjà vu. That's what it was. "Big giant reset button, only…we forget. Most of it. Some of it stays in the form of feelings and that little voice in your head. Have you been feeling anything weird like that? Any visions, any knowledge of the future?" April asked.

"Prophetic visions are pseudoscience," Martha pointed out.

"And time travel is real, we've met witches, and aliens from outer space summoned a hospital to the moon," Harriet said. "I haven't had any. What's your idea?"

"That means it's got to be me," April said. "Because we've been here before, I know we have. We've been here before. At least once, possibly more. And those times never happened, because we pushed the only reset button we could find. I kept some of the knowledge, but no one else did. Eye of the storm, I guess. Time's breaking down anyway—so we're going to have to reset it." April knew she really should just cut to the chase, but she couldn't help it. She was in the Doctor Who universe, coming up with a plan to save the world. And so yes, she was going to act like a fictional character while doing so.

"Yes, but how do we do that?" Harriet asked.

"There's a way to erase today?" Martha questioned.

"Yeah," April said. "Well, the first time it happened, my goal might have just been to revive the Doctor. But then I realized what I could do and reset the timeline, because the less change we make the better. And also, I didn't want to die."

"So, we're going to do today over and over and over again until the Doctor doesn't die?" Martha said. "But nothing will change."

"No. Because I'll remember."

"April," Harriet said. "Now that you've had your eureka moment, what's the reset button?"

"Nineteen thirty. Nineteen thirty. Did they have…never mind. Construction sites. Probably. Hopefully." April smiled. "Harriet? Martha? We can save the world. But first, we're going to need a truck."