The hellish red glow from the TARDIS filled the National Museum, as Jack, Sarah Jane, and El stood nearby, waiting for the end.
"…you alright, El?" Sarah Jane turned to her.
"Yes."
"Are you lying?"
El shook slightly, as the waterworks began. "Yes."
"El," River called to her, "The Doctor wants to talk to you."
The girl nodded, taking some shaky steps up to the box, as the others looked on.
"…It's been so long since I last saw him." Jack quietly remarked as El stepped up to the entrance. "And there he goes again… Only thing I don't like is I won't get to say a proper goodbye."
"Don't say goodbye." River quietly told him. "He hates goodbyes."
Sarah Jane looked to the woman. "Big Bang Two… what will happen to us?"
"We all go back." River answered. "To where we ought to be in time and space. This never happens, and we have no memory of it."
"River… tell me he comes back too."
The woman remained silent, looking downcast.
El took a shaky breath as she stepped to the entrance of the Pandorica, placing a small hand on the Doctor's larger one.
The Time Lord's grip tightened slightly as he registered her presence, looking up.
"El… Jane Ives… Test Subject Eleven…" The Doctor began weakly. "The girl who ran away with a strange man in a box she didn't really know anything about… was it worth it?"
"Yes." El answered, sniffling. "Worth it."
The Doctor huffed and smiled sadly. "I'm glad… I really didn't fancy leaving you on Earth. Truth is… I'd already started counting myself as your dad. Moment I laid eyes on you…"
El wiped her face slightly. "I'm glad it's you."
"I'm glad you're glad." The Doctor let out a breath. "But… you have a real set of parents. A mum and a dad. Or, you did… until the crack took them too."
"I don't…" El sniffled. "I can't remember them."
"You wouldn't… But that's okay, it's not your fault." The Doctor replied.
The room shuddered like an earthquake hit the building.
"Doctor!" River shouted. "It's speeding up!"
"El, listen to me…" The Doctor began. "There's going to be a very big bang… Big Bang Two. Think about them. Think about having a mother, and a father, and friends, and when you wake up… they'll be there."
"How?" El questioned.
"I told you before… you're a very special little girl." The Doctor replied. "Your powers opened the crack in Hawkins… they can reach across time and space. Trust me, just think about them, and they'll be there." He kissed her on the forehead, motioning for the girl to step back.
"You won't." El cried.
The Doctor smiled sadly, looking down. "You'll have human parents… you won't need a moron in a bow tie who keeps risking your life every other day." He threw his head back, allowing the Pandorica's restraints to clamp down. "Ha… look at that. A tear? For me? Guess what?"
"What?" El asked in response.
The Doctor grinned as the box sealed shut. "Gotcha."
The etchings on the Pandorica began to glow green, as the box began to float.
"BACK!" River shouted, running to pull El away from the box. "GET BACK!"
Lightning sparked off the sides of the Pandorica as the four dove into cover, watching as the box shot up like a rocket, smashing clear through the skylight.
River's communicator beeped, and she looked down at it in surprise, sniffling herself. "It's from the Doctor…"
"What does it say?" El asked, staring at the broken roof, watching as the Pandorica became just a dot in the sky, and then nothing at all.
"Is says…" River swallowed. "Geronimo."
The Doctor breathed heavily, the Pandorica throwing him around as it tore through the vacuum of space.
The prison built to hold him smashed through an asteroid, undeterred, as it rocketed towards the enormous ball of fire that had been the TARDIS.
The Pandorica dove into the surface of the blaze, and the universe went white.
The Doctor's eyes snapped open as he sat up, finding himself on the floor of the TARDIS console room.
"Oh!" The Doctor looked around in surprise. "I survived. Brilliant… Love it when I do that… Legs." He twiddled the limbs. "Bow tie," His hand shot to the garment, "Cool. Fez," His hand shot up, "Gave that to El."
"Now, the beach!" A voice shouted from the console, "The beach is the best! Automated sand!"
The Doctor's head slowly turned, finding himself and El standing at the console. "Automated?" The girl repeated, wearing sunglasses and a bathing suit.
"Self-cleaning, self-repairing, self-everything!"
The Doctor looked on brow furrowed. "No, hang on… that's last week. When El and I went to Space Florida. I'm rewinding… the rest of my time stream unraveling."
Something glowed to his right, a massive crack appearing in the wall of the console room.
"Closing." The Doctor finished. "Hello universe… goodbye Doctor." He whipped back over to the console. "El?"
The girl spun around, looking in his direction. Her eyes darted around in confusion, evidently not spotting the Doctor.
Time suddenly snapped around the Doctor, events playing out in his mind in reverse, before he suddenly reappeared, standing in the street of Aickman road.
The Doctor spun around, finding El walk up to the window of a shop. "Ah, three weeks ago, she put the advert in the window. El!"
The girl stopped as she moved to pet a cat, looking in the Doctor's direction in confusion, before going on her way.
"Ah, she can hear me. But if she can hear me…" The Doctor looked to the ground, at the glowing fissure about to swallow him.
The events of the past few months rewound through the Doctor's head, going back, back, all the way back until-
The Time Lord found himself leaning on a tree stump.
"Alright everyone, behave!" The past Doctor ordered. "And do not let that girl open her eyes, under any circumstances. And keep watching the forest, stop those angels from advancing. River, gonna need your computer!" He said to the woman, running off to join her.
The Doctor waited for the past him to walk over, before he approached El.
The girl sat there, eyes closed, listening. The Doctor's two large hands grasped her own smaller ones, the twiddling of her thumbs ceasing.
"El…" The Doctor quietly said to her, so low it was almost a whisper. "You need to start trusting me, it's never been more important."
"Trust you already." El replied.
The Doctor smiled at that.
"I'm glad." The Doctor replied.
"Doctor… said the crack was from Hawkins. How?"
"I don't know yet, but I'm working that out." He told her, glancing over to the past version of himself fiddling with the sonic screwdriver and the scanner. "Now, listen… Remember what I told you when I picked you up in Hawkins?"
"…remember what?"
"No, that's not…" The Doctor replied, anguished. The first rule of monster hunting; watch everything. If something looked out of place, it probably was.
Hopefully… there would be enough things out of place in whatever new universe El woke up in. Then again, he didn't need her to remember the rule. Just remember that the rule existed. Hopefully, the naturally curious child would spot the thread and pull.
"That's not important. What is important is you remember." He pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead.
"Doctor." She stopped him before he could run away. "River… she said you were my dad."
Oh… that wasn't like River, to be so careless with spoilers. "Did she?" The Doctor asked in response.
"Yeah, but… she's from the future… does that mean you'll be my dad one day?"
The Doctor became choked up. He always wondered what caused El to start calling him dad all of a sudden. And then it hit him… if this plan of his went wrong, if she couldn't remember… he'd never get to see her again. Never get to see her grow into the great woman he was sure she would become. Never again… never again.
"El…" The Doctor breathed. "Nothing in this universe could ever make me happier."
And then, the Doctor was gone.
He found himself rewinding, back, back, and back, before he found himself in the corridors of the Hawkins Lab.
He looked around, at the facility still obviously active, but not in the control of UNIT.
"This must be…" The Doctor looked around, to the end of the hall, and the door broken off its hinges. "The night she escaped." The Time Lord followed his senses out of the lab, winding effortlessly past the groups of people that couldn't see him.
The Doctor found himself following El's scent about five miles into the woods, before he stopped.
She was laying there, on the ground, fast asleep. Opening the crack and then fleeing must've been a much bigger drain on her powers, big enough to cause her to fall unconscious.
"Oh, El…" The Doctor breathed, kneeling down to pick her up. "C'mere, you…"
With his little girl sleeping in his arms, the Doctor walked through the woods, to a small cabin not far away. The place was abandoned, no sign of anyone having lived there in a very long time…
It would do, for tonight.
The Time Lord reached out telepathically, opening the door, before looking around.
"Oof… hope you're not allergic to dust." He whispered, carrying her into a small bedroom nearby. The mattress was old, worn. Sonicing it quickly to kill any bedbugs that might've been living inside, he gently laid her down.
Whoever owned the place seemed to only be using it to store junk they didn't want in their main house, so, with a little bit of searching, the Doctor was able to find an old blanket, laying it over El.
The girl unconsciously curled up, as the Doctor pulled up a rickety wooden chair from the kitchen, sitting down in it.
"It's funny…" The Doctor looked ahead. "I thought if you could hear me, maybe I could find a way to hang on, somehow… Silly me." The Time Lord sighed. "Silly old Doctor…"
Something like thunder distantly rumbled, the room glowing slightly as the Doctor leaned closer to El.
"When you wake up," The Doctor began, stroking her buzzcut hair. "Your mum and dad will be out there, somewhere, maybe you can find them. You won't even remember me… well, maybe you'll remember some. An imaginary friend you dreamt up to help get you through the woods… I'll just be a story in your head." The Time Lord smiled slightly. "But that's okay. We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Cause it was you know."
The Doctor flopped back, in the chair. "It was the best… A daft old man who stole a magic box with his granddaughter and ran away…" He looked over to her. "Did I ever tell you I stole it? Well, I borrowed her. I was always going to give the TARDIS back. Oh… that box, El. You'll dream about that box… I hope you'll dream about that box. It'll never leave you. Big and little at the same time. Brand new and ancient. And the bluest blue that ever was…"
Thunder rumbled as the crack began to glow in the wall.
"And the times we had. Would've had." The Doctor amended, as a teardrop fell from his eye. "Never had… In your dreams, they'll still be there… I wonder who you'll wind up with." He spoke aloud. "Certainly not Will. The dream world never happened now… Regardless, when you find them… just make sure my chin doesn't look too big on the page, yeah? The Doctor and Eleven… Eleven Squared… The Eleventh Hour…" The Time Lord laughed to himself. "I think you'll have something special there."
Thunder cracked again, the crack glowing wider as the Doctor turned to it.
"The cracks are closing…" The Doctor explained. "But they won't close properly until I'm on the other side." His eyes fell from the wall. "I don't belong in this universe anymore." The Doctor sniffed, getting to his feet. "I think I'll skip the rest of the rewind. I hate repeats." The Time Lord fought back tears as he pressed his lips to El's forehead. "Live well… Be kind… bye-bye, El."
The Time Lord straightened his bow tie as he stepped back into the crack, the glowing fissure sealing shut behind him, the wall returning to normal shortly after.
El stirred, looking around with open eyes. She would've panicked, being in an unfamiliar room without remembering the journey there.
At the moment, she had not the energy to care.
Her eyes drifted shut as she laid back down, stars looming in the night sky once more.
