I do not own Doctor Who

River slammed the two tubes together, emitting a large shower of sparks from where the two ends met and from the console. The Tardis stopped shaking and the controls shifted back.

Luke followed her as she ran to the doors. Upon opening them, their hearts sank at the sight of their blocked exit.

'I'm sorry, my love,' River murmured to the stone wall. They turned around at the sight of the console spitting sparks like fireworks.

The continuous whisper of "I'm sorry, my love. I'm sorry, my love," was heard by no one.

River wrenched two tubes from under the console and crushed them against each other. A wave of sparks flew from the ends of them as more burped from the console. The Tardis and the console switched around a few controls.

Luke and River ran to the doors. Their exit was blocked by a stone wall.

No. Way. Out.

'I'm sorry, my love,' River muttered mournfully.

They turned around to see more sparks burst from the console.

River and Luke ran to the doors, suddenly, they were halted.

The Doctor was leaning against the wall, as if nothing was wrong. 'Hi, honey.' He smiled. 'I'm home.'

River held up her hand for Luke's wrist. When he held up her arm, she checked his wristwatch before looking up at the Doctor, anger flashing in her eyes. 'And what sort of a time do you call this?'

The Doctor didn't say anything but continued smiling. He held out his hand for them. As soon as Luke and River grabbed his hand, he tapped something strapped around his wrist and Luke was jerked off his feet.

Not even a second lasted as he, River, and the Doctor vanished from inside the Tardis and Luke's sneakers crushed the hard rooftop of somewhere on Earth.

He looked around wildly and saw-

'Amy!' Luke grinned. She smiled back at him. 'Good to see you.' His gaze turned to the man standing next to her and his eyebrows furrowed. 'Are you the centurion who-'

'The plastic Centurion?' River questioned, staring at the man with distrust in her eyes.

Oh yeah! Luke remembered. He's the soldier who volunteered earlier. Wait, where are we? This isn't the time we were just in.

'It's okay, he's on our side,' the Doctor reassured.

'Plastic?' Luke asked, staring at the Centurion, who stared back with something strange in his eyes, almost like disappointment or sadness.

'Long story.' Amy put a hand on the Centurion's arm as if reassuring him.

River looked at the man, examining him for a second. 'I dated a Nestene duplicate once. Swappable head. It did keep things fresh. Right then, I have questions, but number one is this. What in the name of sanity have you got on your head?' she finished, looking at the red hat the Doctor was wearing.

'It's a fez, I wear a fez now. Fezes are cool,' he added stubbornly.

Amy and River made eye contact. Luke couldn't help but snicker as the Doctor protested as Amy snatched the fez off his head without warning and tossed it over the edge of the rooftop, and River drew her gun and disintegrated it in midair. The Doctor looked disappointed at the tattered pieces of the once-was-a-fez for a second before a familiar voice screeched, 'Exterminate! Exterminate!'

Luke's head whipped sideways to see a Dalek hovering over the rooftop. They all knew the drill: run.

The sounds of River and the Doctor holding the Dalek back clanged behind Luke as they sprinted towards the roof assess. Luke jumped in after Amy, followed by the Centurion. The Doctor and River hopped down. They waited in tense silence until the Doctor announced the Dalek was gone.

'Doctor, what's a Dalek doing here?' Luke asked, goosebumps all over his arms. 'Are we being invaded again?'

The Doctor shook his fez-less head as they began running again. 'No. It's the only one. In this time, and universe, I mean. Ah, don't worry,' he added at the still-alarmed look on Luke's face. 'It's not even at lethal capacity. Not yet, at least.'

'What do you mean, lethal capacity?' Amy asked. 'And how is it the only Dalek in the entire universe?'

'Oh, it'll be fully lethal when it kills me,' the Doctor explained like he was telling them someone was taking care of watering Amy's plants. 'And it's the only one in existence because...actually, how is it even existing? It was erased from time and came back.'

Luke noticed him cast a quick sideways glance at the Centurion and back at him. 'Doctor, wait. If we're in the twenty-first century right now, and you didn't use the Tardis, then how-'

The Doctor snapped his fingers, the noise echoed around the pearly corridor they had entered. 'The Pandorica!' Amy exclaimed. She turned to the Doctor. 'You said the light from it-'

'It's not a light, it's a restoration field,' he corrected. 'But whatever, light, then. So, that light brought you back, Amy, it restored you from, well, death and extinction.'

Luke's eyes widened at that. What?!

'But how could it bring back a Dalek when the Daleks never existed?' the Doctor wondered.

'How?' the Centurion urged, and Luke had the slightest smudge of deja vu that he'd seen the Roman somewhere...

The Doctor continued. 'When the Tardis blew up, it caused a total event collapse. A time explosion. And that explosion blasted every atom in every moment of the universe. Except-'

'Except inside the Pandorica,' River put in.

The Doctor nodded. 'The perfect prison. And inside it, perfectly preserved, a few billion atoms of the universe as it was.'

'The smallest particle of everything stored inside it but being kept alive by the light,' Luke realized. 'So then the light can also duplicate every bit of the universe, like the Dalek.' He glanced at Amy. 'You died? But you're alive.'

'I was inside the Pandorica,' she confirmed. 'Shame it wasn't a spotlight inside instead, though,' she joked before becoming serious again. 'So you mean if you do that reviving thing to the universe-'

'We save literally everything-everything,' Luke finished. 'Sounds like a plan.'

River was more skeptical. 'Doctor, this is completely ridiculous. The Pandorica partially restored one Dalek. If it can't reboot a single lifeform properly, how's it going to reboot the whole of reality?'

'What if we give it a moment of infinite power?' he suggested. 'What if we can transmit the light from the Pandorica to every particle of space and time simultaneously?'

'We'll need something to put inside, then. Like with Amy, uh, no offense,' he added. Amy shrugged, unbothered. 'Like a source so the light can transmit it. But how're we going to do that?'

'We can't. Because it's completely impossible,' River stated flatly.

'Ah no, you see, it's not,' the Doctor protested. 'It's almost completely impossible. One spark is all we need for it to work. Remember how everything-everything started?'

'The Big Bang!' Luke answered quickly. 'So you mean we're going to-'

'Yep! Big Bang Two.' The Doctor grinned. 'Now, listen-argh!'

Luke's eyes widened in horror as a beam of light flashed in front of him, engulfing the Doctor in it's glare. The Doctor's skeleton glowed and disappeared as he collapsed on the museum floor. 'Doctor, no!' Luke tried to get down on his knees to take his pulse. He couldn't be dead!

Amy and the Centurion pulled him away, behind the wall. River stood in front of the Dalek, the Centurion shooting it with his...literal finger gun.

'Exterminate!' The Dalek's voice was drawing spinetingling close, which didn't actually require much closeness. 'Exterminate!'

Luke barely had time to register the moment of relief and shock as the Doctor raised his arm, tapped his wrist and disappeared. 'Doctor!'

With a bang from River's gun, the Dalek shut down. 'He's gone!' Luke exclaimed to Amy and the Centurion. 'The Vortex Manipulator-he's somewhere-'

'He went downstairs,' Amy realized, but she didn't sound surprised. 'Twelve minutes ago.'

'Show us!' River ordered.

Amy eyes darkened. 'River, he died.'

Luke shook his head immediately in denial. 'No-he can't be dead. The Dalek isn't even at it's full power-he survived a full blast once, too.' He cringed internally, deciding to not mention how he avoided regenerating and what happened after.

Before River could reply, the Dalek rebooted itself.

The Centurion grabbed Amy and Luke's shoulders. 'We need to move. That thing's coming back to life.'

River agreed and turned to take care of the Dalek quickly. Luke followed the two as they ran, the blasts of River's gun echoing around the museum behind them. They stopped at the bottom of the flight of stairs leading down to the museum reception, where a dark jacket was left on the steps, but no Doctor.

Judging by the stunned looks on Amy and the Centurion's faces, they were expecting the Doctor to be there. 'Doctor?' Luke called. 'This means he's alive!'

'No, he's not!' Amy denied. 'He's dead.'

'Who told you that?' River suddenly appeared. Luke didn't want to imagine what happened to the Dalek.

'He did,' Amy answered.

'Rule one: the Doctor lies,' River recited as if off by heart.

'Where did he go, then?' Luke wondered quickly.

The four of them locked gazes in simultaneous understanding. 'The Pandorica!'

Four pairs of hurried footsteps echoed around the silence of the museum.

Luke froze. In front of them was the open Pandorica, the Doctor strapped to a seat inside it, unconscious, ragged, and looking like he was already dying. The rise and fall of his chest and no signature regeneration energy told Luke he was still alive. For now. 'He's going to sacrifice himself, isn't he?' Luke breathed, remembering what happened at the Byzantium with the Angels.

'That selfless idiot,' River growled. 'Of course he needed us to think he was dead so he could follow out his own plan.' She rushed forwards to the Doctor. 'Doctor, can you hear me? Doctor?'

Blinding light shone on Luke's face. He shielded his eyes with his hand. 'Is that the Tardis?' He turned back around to see objects around the museum suddenly gone. 'Where did the-'

'Reality's collapsing,' River answered. 'It's speeding up. History's being erased towards us now. Doctor! Tell us what you're doing-'

'Big...Bang...Two,' the Doctor mumbled, barely conscious.

'The Big Bang,' the Centurion repeated. 'That's the beginning of the universe, right?'

'What, and Big Bang Two is the bang that brings us back?' Amy exclaimed, skeptical. 'Is that what you mean?'

Luke and River figured it out simultaneously. Luke stepped back slowly with horror. River's mouth opened in a wide "O". She straightened backwards, away from the once-again unconscious Doctor. 'Oh.'

'What?' Amy demanded.

Luke stared at the straps trapping the Doctor to the seat of doom. 'The Pandorica can restore things. Anything. It just needs a sample of whatever it is. The Tardis is exploding right now, and destroying everything. But if we throw the Pandorica into the explosion-'

'Then let there be light,' River offered. 'The light from the Pandorica will explode everywhere at once. Just like the Doctor said.'

'Can that work?' the Centurion cut in. 'That can restore the universe?'

'A restoration field powered by an exploding Tardis, happening at every moment in history,' River mused. 'Oh, that's brilliant. It might even work. He's wired the vortex manipulator to the rest of the box.'

'Why?' Amy looked confused.

'So he can pilot it.' Luke felt horrified. 'He's going to fly the Pandorica into the heart of the explosion. But-'

'He might not make it.' River stared at the Doctor.

Luke was numb outside. The screaming light of the exploding Tardis bathed his face from the window in front of him, but he stared at the floor, unseeing. On the inside, he raked his brain for anything that would allow him the slightest hope the Doctor would make it out alive. Nothing. Amy and Rory stood beside each other behind him. Silence solidified the remains of space between them.

A devastated sigh escaped Luke's mouth and he punched the wall in frustration. Heaving a heavy sigh, he straightened, his knuckles throbbing. 'Nothing. I-I can't see how he's going to get out of this one this time,' Luke muttered.

He could feel the Centurion glance at him. 'Luke. Are you okay?'

Luke allowed his shoulders to slump at the question. 'Not for much longer,' he admitted. 'You two?'

There was hesitation before the Centurion answered, 'Not really.' They waited. 'Amy? Are you okay?'

'Are you? And don't say "not really",' she asked stiffly.

'...No.'

'Well, shut up, then!' she snapped.

Luke sighed and turned around just as River came from the Pandorica. 'Amy?' she called. 'He wants to talk to you.'

'He's going to survive, right?' Luke pleaded, hopelessness showing in his voice.

River shook her head and took a deep breath. 'He'll be at the heart of the explosion, so all the cracks in time will close, but he'll be on the wrong side, trapped in the never-space, the void between the worlds. All memory of him will be purged from the universe. He will never have been born.'

'River...' Amy trailed off. The confirmed truth of what will happen to the Doctor was as real as the tears welling up in Luke's eyes.

'He wants to talk to you, Amy.' River looked at her.

Amy looked back. Tears of sorrow mixing with anger. 'Why not you? Or Luke?'

River smiled sadly. 'He doesn't really know me yet. Now he never will. Just wait here. And Luke,' she added as Amy turned to leave. 'The Doctor said to give you a message.'

Luke glanced at her, tears were running down his face. 'Yes?'

'He told me to tell you...you have to remember.'

'What does that mean?' Luke asked. River walked away. 'River?'

The Centurion put a hand on his shoulder. 'Don't fret over it. His stuff always makes more sense if you don't worry over it.'

Luke nodded and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. 'Yeah, you're right.'

The Centurion fiddled with his hands. 'So, you're Luke Smith.'

'Yeah.' Luke held out a hand for the Centurion to shake. 'And you are...?'

'My name's Rory.' Why did the Centurion look nervous? 'Rory Williams. Do you remember me?'

'You were back at the Roman legion,' Luke answered. 'You volunteered to help us. I never got to thank you for that.'

The Centurion shook his head. 'That's not what I meant. And you're welcome, by the way.' He took a deep breath. 'Do you remember when we were trying to establish peace with the Silurians? And I, uh, got shot?'

Luke furrowed his brow. He was about to shake his head, but something stopped him. There was something lingering at the back of his mind, some memory. He hesitated. 'I-I don't know. Should I know?'

'We didn't manage to make peace,' the Centurion continued. Was that hope in his voice? 'And then one of the Silurians, Restac, she wanted revenge for her sister Alaya's death. So she followed us to the Tardis after we ran when the emergency failsafe we'd activated to escape.'

Luke put his fingers on his forehead. Disjointed memories were racing around in his mind. Lizard people...a graveyard...running...the Tardis...

The crack in Amy's bedroom wall.

'...Then I was on the ground, and the last thing I r-'

'She shot you.' Luke gasped as memories flooded his mind. Rory. Rory Williams. 'You-you died, and then...the crack-the light touched you.'

The Centurion-Rory nodded eagerly. 'Then I died. Uh, then I remember coming back to life as, well, plastic. But I remembered everything.'

Luke looked up, eyes wide. 'It's you.'

Rory grinned. 'Hello.'

Luke leapt up and hugged him so hard the breath whooshed out of Rory's lungs. 'I remember you. You're alive!'

For a moment, all was forgotten. At least until the ground began to shake like an earthquake and the burning light outside glowed so bright it could've beamed through the museum walls.

Luke and Rory pulled away as River jumped towards them. 'Back!' she barked. 'Get back!' Amy came running out of the Pandorica as it closed. Luke caught one last glimpse of the Doctor inside before reality closed between them. The four of them leaned against each other, everything shaking around them.

The Pandorica shuddered and shot into the sky like a rocket. River glanced down at her device, on it was a message. 'It's from the Doctor!' she shouted over the rumbling noises.

'What does it say?' Amy cried.

Luke leaned over to read it. 'Geronimo!'

The remains of the universe vibrated around them. Darkness swooped over everything and Luke was falling. Falling into an endless void...

Then, there was a shooting star above him. The brightest star burning way up in the unreachable sky.

And finally, a furiously pure white light split open the shadows.

"Let there be light" Luke recited in his mind.

The alarm woke Luke up. He jolted, sitting bolt upright. Where was he? Wait-oh.

'Hey! You awake?' Clyde's voice called from outside the door. The door of the guest room in Clyde's house. 'Mom said we're making pancakes for breakfast. Wanna help?'

Luke blinked and got out of the bed. He was in Clyde's house. Sarah-Jane had died and his friend's family had adopted him. But when did all that happen? The last few months felt a bit fuzzy.

'That's it! You better be decent otherwise I'm coming in with a bucket of cold water!'

The door burst open. Luke realized he was in his pyjamas. Clyde was dressed in casual clothes and held an elegant-looking envelope in his hand. 'Mom said to give you this-' He tossed a suit on Luke's bed. 'Why didn't you tell me you were invited to a wedding?'

Luke stared at him. 'What? Wait-what am I doing here?'

Clyde raised an eyebrow, not understanding. 'This is your room, remember? Are you okay?'

Luke stood up. 'I'm fine...just, uh. Thanks. For taking me in, Clyde.' He fiddled with the hem of his nightshirt awkwardly.

Clyde blinked and smiled. 'No problem. So, pancakes?'

'Yep! Yeah, okay.' Luke opened the drawers, all his clothes were there. But...he already knew that. 'I'll be down in a bit.'

Luke slipped on the suit, struggling with the bowtie that was-for some strange reason-added to it. Eventually, he walked down to the kitchen, the bowtie askew. When he entered the kitchen, the smell of pancakes wafted through the house.

Mrs Langer glanced up just as she scooped the pancakes from the frying pan and onto the plates. She looked up at him with a kind smile. 'Morning, Luke. So, I see you're ready to go to that wedding? Your bowtie's crooked.' She leaned over to fix it.

Clyde rolled his eyes. 'Mom, you're probably embarrassing him right now,' he mocked.

'Just because you're to proud to admit you can't do a tie doesn't mean Luke is,' she countered playfully.

Luke laughed hesitantly. Who's wedding? Wait-Amelia Pond-Williams. And Rory Williams. 'Good morning, Mrs Langer. Thanks.' He added as she fixed the bowtie.

'You should've told us you were invited a wedding. And, it's okay to call me Mum when you feel okay with it.'

'Oh, okay, thanks. Mom.'

Luke sat down. All around him were adults, happy and smiling. Amy and Rory sat at the front of the room, but there was something wrong with Amy.

Her gaze was locked onto him. Luke was confused when he realized she wasn't looking at him, she was looking at his bowtie. He waved hesitantly, but she looked away.

Before he knew it, there was a familiar whooshing sound and the Tardis sat proudly smack in the middle of the wedding room. Luke's jaw dropped and he remembered everything.

The Doctor, the Tardis, their adventures across space and time.

Luke had laughed and danced all night, watching the Doctor make up some sort of mad wriggle on the dancing floor. When the stars were out, he waved goodbye to the other guests and walked outside with Amy and Rory into the Tardis.

The Tardis hummed happily when Amy and Rory left to their own room. Luke turned to the Doctor. 'Back at the Maze of the Dead, with the Angels,' he began.

'And I told you to remember,' the Doctor added. 'Yes. You've travelled with us for a long time, Luke. You remembered with Amy, and you brought me back. Well, us, the Tardis and I. That crack in everything, it's sealed now.'

Luke grinned. 'No more cracks in bedroom walls.'

'No more,' the Doctor agreed. 'Now, we need to save an Egyptian goddess lost on the Orient Express!'

Thanks for reading!