A/N: Hello, and welcome back! I hope everybody enjoyed their Septembers. If you didn't see on my profile, I took a quick mental health break from all things that weren't IRL related, as my life took a turn for the strange (and that's outside of the whole quarantine situation). That being said, I am back in time for October, as I said I would be!
I'll admit, this chapter is basically a rip-off of the transcript for Stolen Earth, but it's important (for more reasons than one). It's also incredibly short, but I hope that you still enjoy!
Quick note if you didn't see, I updated chapters one-seven so that they're now one-four with minor edits.
To Saiyanprincess1511, thanks for your kind words! I've never seen Rick and Morty but I'll take it as a compliment because you called it brilliant, so. Also, she's Sadasaclam!Anna because I half-remembered the phrase 'happy as a clam' and just liked the idea of turning that on it's head (as Ryan from Pitch Meetings would say, subverting expectations is tight!).
Also, speaking of errors (and thanks for pointing out the repeat one line), I spent ten+ hours editing Chapter... what is it now, twenty eight? Because the stupid doc manager kept acting up. I know I've got about a million and four grammatical errors in that chapter that I fully intend to head back and fix one day. Today just is not that day.
Now, onto the story!
I still don't own Doctor Who (shocking, I know).
Chapter Twenty Nine: The Stolen Earth
She appeared in the console room, exactly where she hadn't meant to. It appeared that the Doctor was mid-regeneration.
Well, there's that, then, she told herself, shielding herself from the light of his regeneration.
Instead of appearing ten seconds after she'd teleported out, she'd found her way to the console room about an hour or so after they'd already done... Well, the entire episode, come to think of it.
The question was, why hadn't they stuck around to find out where she'd ended up?
#####
When time unfroze, Anna was nowhere to be found.
He searched her for about an hour before he gave up, figuring that if a different timeline version of herself had business to attend to with her, he couldn't exactly get in the way of that. Besides, the look on the other Anna's face had seemed important, and he didn't want to interrupt. It was one thing to have two different timeline versions of himself to contend with, it was another thing entirely to have an all-powerful being visit herself. That probably spelled more trouble than even he could've handled.
She would return when she was ready, and that aside, he trusted... herself to keep herself safe.
In the meantime, he sought out Donna to find her in a tent. "All right, then?" he asked.
He was more than surprised when Donna rushed over to him, giving him a hug. He laughed a little.
"What was that for?"
She barely pulled back, shaking her head. "I don't know," she said, laughing, but there was relief in everything about her.
It was then that his eyes landed on the beetle and knew that trouble had come to call.
#####
"But what I don't get is where Anna was," she said. "Cause she could've done way more for you than I ever could."
"Oh..." he said, pieces falling into place. "No, of course..."
"What?" she asked.
He quickly dove into the explanation of the two Anna's.
"But that still begs the question of why she didn't stick around," Donna pointed out. "She could've saved you, but she didn't, so why?"
"That's... actually a really good question," he said, leaning forward and rubbing his jaw as he contemplated the answer.
Donna was right. Anna couldn't always save everyone (even if she'd eventually revealed that she had saved the village that the Family of Blood had tried to bomb to dust, as well as the whole of Pompeii. He briefly smiled as he thought about what a good night that had been when she'd told him), but that didn't mean that she wouldn't if the chance arose.
"Maybe the timeline had to exist," he told her, looking over at her. "Maybe it was important for you to exist through that. Mind you, parallel universes do seem to pop up around you a lot."
"Hold on, you said parallel worlds are sealed off."
"They are," he agreed. "But- well, mind you, unless you're Anna, but anyway, you had one created around you. Most times, this thing'll just change a life in tiny little ways and the universe just compensates around it, but, well, there we are, another parallel world."
"How'd you mean?" she asked.
"Well, The Library, now this."
"Just goes with the job, I suppose."
It wasn't the first time that the Doctor had thought about it, but it was the first time he was sharing his thoughts with her.
"Sometimes I think there's way too much coincidence around you, Donna. I met you once, then I met you again. In the whole wide universe, I met you for a second time. It's like something's binding us together."
"Don't be so daft. I'm nothing special."
"Yes you are. You're brilliant."
Donna got a thoughtful look on her face, barely turning away from him. "She said that," she told him.
He frowned. "Who, Anna?"
"No, you git," she said, and he would never admit that he barely pouted. "That woman." She frowned deeper before she shook her head. "I can't remember."
Wanting to reassure her, he shook his head. "Well, she never existed, now," he told her.
"No, but she said the stars. She said the stars are going out."
"Yeah, but that world's gone," he gently reminded her.
"No, but she said it was all worlds." He searched her, wavering between interrupting her to remind her that that world had never existed and opting to listen patiently. He didn't feel like getting a smack so he did the latter. "Every world. She said the darkness is coming even here."
He frowned at that. "Who was she?"
"I don't know."
"What did she look like?"
"She was blonde."
It was strange, then, what those simple words could do to him. He didn't feel hope like he thought he might. Instead, it was some kind of dread that filled him now, and he leaned back in his seat a little, the tent suddenly too small.
He still managed to make the words leave his mouth. "What was her name?"
"I don't know."
More insistent now, he asked, "Donna, what was her name?"
It was very hard to resist the urge to reach out and shake her. He barely managed it. "But she told me to warn you. She said two words."
The words echoed in his head, but he still asked. "What two words? What were they? What did she say?"
"Bad Wolf."
He felt everything falling out of him and through him, all at the same measure.
"Well, what does it mean?" Donna asked.
Instead of answering her question, he ran outside to see every bit of writing in the market had been translated to reflect those two words. The Tardis was trying to tell him that it was her, that it was her, it was really her.
It was Rose.
After all this time and she was coming back. Except, he couldn't think like that, because he'd no idea if she were actually-
The stars are going out.
And, if the stars were going out, then why wouldn't that then mean that the walls between the worlds were breaking down as well?
He ran into the Tardis to find that the emergency lighting had been activated, the cloister bell tolling. He didn't know if Rose was returning, but he knew one thing. If those words were written, then-
"It's the end of the universe."
#####
Except, it wasn't.
He and Donna landed on Earth to find that everything was exactly as it should've been.
"It's fine," he said, even though he didn't need to. Hearing it out loud was comforting, and a welcome distraction from the thought that he was about to see Rose again and the wedding ring that was currently sitting on his left hand and how much more complicated that made all this (which definitely wasn't what he should be focusing on, end of the universe, remember?).
He nodded, searching his surroundings.
"Everything's fine. Nothing's wrong, all fine." His eyes landed on a milkman and he quickly moved to him. "Excuse me. What day is it?"
"Saturday," he answered, and to his credit, he barely missed a beat at the question.
He nodded in response before turning away, distracted, the milkman walking away now that he was no longer needed (convenient, that). "Saturday. Good. Good. I like Saturdays."
Immediate danger passed, Donna got to the important issue (well, in her mind, anyway). "So, I just met Rose Tyler?"
"Yeah."
"But she's locked away in a parallel world."
He remembered it in full detail. Watching in excruciating detail as Rose's grip slipped, as she was pulled towards the wall, how his twenty thoughts had turned into twenty thousand frantic ones as he tried to think about how to save her, but he couldn't, and he hadn't. Her dad had saved her where he hadn't, appearing at exactly the right moment.
He shook the thought from his mind, starting back towards the Tardis. "Exactly. If she can cross from her parallel world to your parallel world, then that means the walls of the universe are breaking down, which puts everything in danger. Everything. But how? Anna- Anna!"
"What, what is it, what's wrong?"
"I forgot about Anna!" he shouted, running around the console to set it for the Shan Shen Marketplace.
"You forgot about your own wife?"
"The universe was ending!" he pointed out.
"You forgot about your own-"
The Tardis shuddered to the side. Both of them jolted, holding on.
"What the hell was that?" Donna asked.
"Don't know. It came from outside."
When the Doctor opened the door, Donna pointed out the obvious. "But we're in space. How did that happen? What did you do?"
He ran back up the gangway before he shook his head. "We haven't moved. We're fixed. It can't have. No. The Tardis is still in the same place, but the Earth is gone. The entire planet. It's gone."
Donna shook her head. "But if the Earth's been moved, they've lost the sun. What about my mum? And granddad? They're dead, aren't they? Are they dead?"
The Doctor chewed on his lip, trying to decide if Anna would've intervened on the Earth's behalf.
He felt everything in him grow cold.
What if this was why her parallel world had to be constructed? What if Anna had allowed this to happen (the other Anna, mind) because Donna had to survive... but the rest of the planet didn't?
"Doctor-"
"I don't know, Donna," he snapped at her.
What a waste it was, he thought, that Anna could save Pompeii but she couldn't save the billions of people on the Earth.
"I just don't know," he said, because he didn't. "I'm sorry, I don't know."
At least, he hoped he didn't.
"That's my family. My whole world."
He scoured the screens again for good measure before he shook his head. "There's no readings. Nothing. Not a trace. Not even a whisper." he shook his head. Whatever it was, it wasn't good. "Oh, that is fearsome technology."
Donna asked the obvious question, then.
"So, what do we do?"
He rubbed at his face. "Well, since Anna isn't here... We've got to get help."
"From where?"
But goodness, he hated to say it, hated that he even had to think it. "Donna, I'm taking you to the Shadow Proclamation. Hold Tight!"
#####
A lot happened to get them to the street where it would all end, only the Doctor didn't know that at the time.
He was standing there, looking around as Donna commented.
"Like a ghost town," she said.
He ignored this. Of course it would be. What else would it be when the daleks were involved?
He suddenly wished more fervently that Anna was at his side, trying to ignore the ache in his chest as he thought about her, completely helpless and alone.
Well, helpless, no, but alone, certainly. Even without her many abilities, she was never truly helpless. But, in the midst of all this, he'd rather have Anna by his side, in his sight, where he knew that the daleks couldn't reach her.
Ooh, he'd no idea if they already had. He really wished he hadn't had that thought.
He tried to distract himself with the situation at hand.
"Sarah Jane said they were taking people. What for? Think, Donna. When you met Rose in that parallel world, what did she say?"
Donna, who had been extremely helpful up to this point, was annoyingly not.
"Just, the darkness is coming."
"Anything else?"
She started to open her mouth to speak before a look devolved over her face, one that he couldn't decipher. He frowned, searching her, wondering, for a moment, if Anna had suddenly appeared behind him and they were all saved (assuming that she could even do anything, but also, what a horrifying thought that was, because it meant she'd died on Shan Shen, alone and afraid, and it wasn't meant to happen like that. He prefer it not happen at all, but if it were to happen, then let it not happen like that, where she was alone and afraid and wondering-).
Donna looked over at him, interrupting his rather macabre thought process. "Why don't you ask her yourself?"
He frowned even deeper at her. Donna pointed behind him.
It was the moment that would change everything. When he turned to look behind him, he saw her.
Rose.
He'd told Anna once that there'd always be a place in his hearts for Rose, and even though time had passed, there still was. He didn't love her nearly as fiercely or as devastatingly. It wouldn't tear his hearts out and shatter them to pieces to lose her again. But, in that moment, seeing her for the first time in what had to be nearly sixty years, he forgot everything else, because she was still Rose, young and beautiful and, most importantly, running towards him.
Even if she wasn't the love of his lives anymore, he still found himself doing the same.
There was some part of him that always knew the daleks would one day be his downfall. He apparently wasn't wrong, because he heard the, "Exterminate!" being shouted from somewhere down a side street.
The dalek extermination ray hit him, and that was how it started.
But, it was nowhere near over.
#####
So, there she was, Anna, bitter and exhausted and wanting nothing more than to curl up in bed with her husband and have a good cry about the day's events.
Of course she would make the choice to teleport back here instead of with Sadasaclam!Anna. Even if she was naïve enough to think that the Doctor didn't actually understand her pain, she knew that fighting him on this would hurt Sadasaclam!Anna more than it needed to, and she didn't want that. She wanted what she had always wanted for her, which was for her to get help, no matter the cost.
She was distracted from any and all thoughts when the Doctor finished regenerating, but it wasn't just because he'd finished regenerating.
Standing before her wasn't Pinstripes.
"What the-" she started, under her breath, before she unconsciously glanced around. It took her a moment to know why she was doing so, but when she did, her eyes widened as large as saucers.
The hand wasn't there, and much to her horror, she realized that it never had been.
Continued in: Part II: The Next Doctor
A/N: And there you have it, folks, the end of A Matter of Perspective and onto the next story, The New Doctor! Not to spoil anything, but yes, we are saying goodbye to Pinstripes and saying hello to the new Doctor (as the story title suggests). This was the 'thing' that I kept alluding to way back when, and I'm very excited to see how you guys react to this new development.
That being said, thank you so much to everyone who read and reviewed throughout the course of this story. Your support meant the world to me, and I hope to see you guys at the next story (with the first chapter already having been posted), as I have a lot more adventures planned and new stories to tell (as well as questions to answer, with more questions to come).
As always, thanks for reading, and also as always, don't forget to review!
