This was absolutely delicious.
The Mara slithered through the jungle, gobbling up animals and people alike. To her they were no different. She had to feed.
The fear pumping throughout each and every one of them thrilled her and she drank and drank and drank. In her wake she left only muck, blood and death. Even the plants trembled before her as she thrashed towards the mountains, whipping across valleys and rivers alike in her haste.
Before her, the fear grew, spreading outward like a wave. And so she grew with it, feasting on the raw power of their mortal terror. Until she, the Mara, were a mountain, arcing across Earth, given lift by the fear and hatred and horror.
It was joyous.
After so, long, to fly again. To kill, to taste again.
She dove into the oceans and fed. And again into the sky. And down into the cities, smashing through the skyscrapers and crust. She savored every atom.
And then she was airborne again, her hide slick and glossy against the blackness of space, swirling around the planet that now seemed so tiny, its wounds bleeding into the atmosphere with crimson dust and steam.
And blood.
The Mara roared with delight.
And she then plunged back into the world, smashing through the mantle and into the core, reveling and splashing in the molten, dying heart.
The Doctor watched speechless. On the scanner screen, Earth quivered as the Mara pulled itself wholly into the planet, just as a worm pulls itself into a diseased and rotten apple.
This was impossible. It was 1972.
This couldn't be happening.
They couldn't be dead.
She couldn't be dead. Not like that.
The Doctor sighed, and turned from the screen. He hung his jacket up on the coat rack. He patted his celery kindly before moving back to the console.
The vast gray room was empty. No Tegan. No Turlough. No one.
The room seemed terribly sad, somehow, humming emptily into the nothingness.
He was dead. All of him were dead. Dead or changed.
The pink band itched again, distantly. He fought the urge to rip it off.
It was, quite possibly, the only reason he was still alive, unlike the rest of himselves.
He promised himself he'd never do this, but there was nothing, no one left. Not even himself.
The Doctor squared his shoulders and moved to a particular part of the console. He moved his hands in a strange gesture, fast and quick, in the air above the panel.
A lever appeared where there had been none before.
It was absurdly large, with a round, gleaming knob.
He stared at it, long and deliberating. Then, with both hands, he slowly lowered the lever and stepped away from the console.
The Time Rotor, the neon, crystalline heart of the console, floated upwards until it hovered just above his head. One of the hexagonal panels of the console sank into the floor, leaving the gaping white emptiness in the middle.
The light in the room dimmed, solemnly.
The Doctor closed his eyes and stepped into the center of the console.
He felt panic swell inside him as the console closed around him, but then he felt something sooth him, a quick, gentle brush of calm upon his mind.
And then he was gone.
Behind him, in the empty console room, a little red light began to flash incessantly.