Welcome one and all to this chapter! I thought about doing Time Crash, but honestly, Barry would have nothing to do but stand in the background and snigger. I'll post it if there's any interest.
Anyway, this chapter's a bit longer than usual, but in fairness, there is a lot going on. There's a Very Serious conversation Barry and the Doctor need to have, which will be discussed further below.
So without further ado...
After a moment of stunned silence, the Doctor jumped up and worked the console. The tip of the ship's bow pulled back, and the walls of their own ship rolled together, seeming to heal themselves. A quick hop in the TARDIS later, the duo emerged cautiously into a hallway, which led to a party full of people in Edwardian-style evening dress. Men, women…little red-skinned aliens. Barry's gaze was drawn to the window, which looked out on Earth rotating below. A mechanized voice announced,
"Attention all passengers. The Titanic is now in orbit above Sol Three, also known as Earth. Population, Human. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Christmas."
Changing into tuxedos and bow ties, the two men wandered through the Titanic.
"That's not a bad omen at all," Barry noted wryly. "Us in our tuxedos, on a ship called the Titanic…"
The Doctor shot him a wry look, eyebrows raised. "Keep your ring ready, just in case."
"Always," Barry agreed. "Doctor, before the inevitable happens…can we talk?"
"Mmm."
The Doctor led the way to a small, fancy-looking couch facing a picture window looking out over the planet. He leaned back and faced his companion intently. "What's up?"
"You lied to me," Barry said evenly. He'd imagined this conversation so many times over the last year… "You told me Jack was back on Earth."
"Well, technically…"
"Don't." Barry glared at his mentor. "Don't give me the "technically true" thing. You lied to me, Doctor."
Instead of meeting his eyes, the Doctor turned and looked out the viewport.
"Yeah. Yeah, I did."
"Why?"
"Barry, I don't see the universe the same way you lot do. I see…what was, what is, what could be, must never be. Every second. Jack…when you brought him back, you made him a fixed point in time. An impossible thing. He's wrong. When he tried to get aboard the TARDIS, she went to the end of the universe to try and shake him off."
"So you just abandoned him."
"Yup."
They sat in silence for a couple of minutes. "But he forgave you."
"Yeah."
"Well…okay then. But no more lies, okay?"
The Doctor sighed, his gaze distant. "In that case…"
"Yeah?"
"Barry, I know who you are," the Doctor told him. "I always have."
"What do you mean?"
"You're famous, Barry. Or you will be, in the future. You'll be a superhero. The Fastest Man Alive."
"Wow," Barry breathed. "Really?"
"Yup."
"So what do I call myself? In the future, I mean. Huh." Barry rubbed his chin. "Scarlet Speedster? Nah, something more catchy. Maybe the Blur, or the Streak? Crimson Comet? Monarch of Motion? No, that just sounds ridiculous."
"Keep thinking," the Doctor encouraged him. "It'll come to you in a flash of inspiration."
For some unaccountable reason, he seemed to find this hilarious.
"Huh." Barry nodded, his eyes narrowed. "I'm guessing you didn't tell me earlier 'cause of the potential paradox?"
"Yeah. There's still a lot I can't say. You know. Once you know your future, you can't change it, sort of thing. You're not the first potential superhero I've traveled with."
"Right." Barry rubbed his hands on his thighs. "So…"
"I'm sorry," the Doctor added, looking into his eyes. "Really, I am. But it would've been a lot."
Barry snorted. "Yeah, like Obi-Wan in Episode IV. 'Oh, by the way, Luke, your dad is not only a former Jedi Knight, but also the most feared person in the galaxy!"
"Second-most," the Doctor smiled.
"I don't know," Barry argued, gesturing as he talked. He knew exactly what the Doctor was doing, but decided to let it slide. "I mean, the Emperor was kind of an abstract concept to most people, but Vader was, like, in-your-face kinda terrifying."
"Well…"
For the next short while, nothing particularly frightening happened, unless you counted a waitress dropping her tray. The noise caused Barry to jump a foot in the air, heart racing, and when he recovered, he saw that the Doctor, chronic hero syndrome at the fore, was already coming to her aid.
"Astrid Peth," she introduced herself.
"The Doctor. And that's Barry Allen."
"Hi," Barry leaned across to shake her hand, careful of the glass. Wandering over to the window, they looked out at the planet below and spoke of their shared desire, to go out and walk amongst the stars.
"I never get tired of seeing this," Barry told the Doctor quietly. "Looking down at the planet…"
"I know," his friend agreed. "I know."
"You must do that a lot," Astrid sighed.
"More than you'd think," Barry nodded.
"We just travel," the Doctor put in. "All the time. For fun. Well, that's the plan, anyway."
"Never works."
"You must be rich," Astrid said.
"Not a penny," the Doctor told her. "Stowaways."
"No."
"Yup," Barry said, popping the "p." The Doctor explained how the TARDIS had crashed into the Titanic. Barry shot him a glance—it was harder to trust people now, after everything he'd been through. Astrid, though, just smiled and went to get them drinks.
As she headed off, she passed a group of smartly-dressed men and women, laughing at another couple. Barry'd had plenty of that as a kid. The Doctor, judging by his expression, wasn't much of a fan of bullies either, and inconspicuously pulled out his sonic screwdriver, pointing it at the table of smarmy jerks and making the champagne cork on the table erupt in a fountain.
"Did you do that?" the woman gasped, as Barry chortled and her husband clapped his hands.
"Maybe," the Doctor replied, straight-faced. They introduced themselves, and a man's voice came over the PA again, calling for group Red Six Seven to form up for a visit to the planet below.
"Want to go to Earth?" the Doctor asked Barry, eyebrows raised. The speedster grinned at him.
"Oh, why not? Sounds fun. Be a first."
Swiftly insinuating themselves into the group, Barry, the Doctor, and Astrid (their plus-one, according to the psychic paper), listened to the ship's historian, Mr. Copper, tell them about old London Town in the country of Yoo Kay, ruled over by Good King Wenceslas. Barry had to fake a sudden coughing fit as the Doctor inquired just where, exactly, he'd gotten his degree from. The short, red alien they'd seen earlier hurried up, and against the Doctor's protests about how much he would stick out, Mr. Cooper pressed a button, cutting him off mid-sentence and beaming them down to the planet below.
"It should be full," the Doctor muttered, looking around. "It should be busy. Something's wrong."
"I'll scout 'round," Barry offered, and in a heartbeat, he'd changed into his suit and was gone. When he came back, he found the Doctor and Astrid talking to an older man at a newsstand, who was explaining that seemingly, everyone except himself and the Queen had left London out of fear of alien attacks.
"Well, between you and me, I think Her Majesty's got it right," the Doctor agreed, making a face. "Far as I know, this year, nothing to worry about."
"And then there was that thing a couple weeks ago over in America…"
Of course, even as the old man was talking, a glow formed around them and the next thing Barry knew, he was back onboard the ship.
Mr. Cooper said something about a power fluctuation, and the rest of the group wandered off to explore to their heart's content, but Barry leaned quietly against a corner.
"You okay?" the Doctor asked him.
"Yeah. Fine. It's just…after all that…the Master…"
The Doctor squeezed his arm. "I'm just going to take a look at the scanners. Grab a drink and rest, okay? You're safe now."
Barry nodded, and watched his friend move off, before letting his eyes roam around the room and indulging in his hobby of people-watching, as well as pressing a button on a holographic poster of the owner.
"My name is Max," it said. "My name is Max…my name is Max…my name is Max."
Naturally, of course, it didn't take long for the Doctor to get into trouble once more. Barry rushed into action, tripping up a pair of security guards for long enough for the Doctor to jump up on the stage and yell for everyone to get to the lifepods; there were asteroids incoming.
"Barry, don't mind me, get up to the bridge! See if you can get the shields back up!" the Doctor shouted, just before he was grabbed by a golden, robot angel.
"Always with the angels," Barry muttered, before rolling his eyes and rushing off. He stopped at a kiosk to grab directions, then rushed up through several corridors, bursting into the room just as the captain of the ship fired an old-fashioned pistol at another crewman, whom Barry estimated was around his age.
Pouring on the speed, Barry lunged forward, grabbed the bullet, turned, and punched out the captain before returning to normal speed.
"Thanks-what-who…" the young man at the helm started.
"Forget me, just get the shields up!" Barry snapped. "How do we do it?"
The young man blinked at him, but turned to the controls, pulling up a readout.
"The…the captain's taken them off-line."
"Then can you get them back up?"
"Yeah. Yeah. It'll take time, though."
"How long?" Barry asked, looking over the controls. As he watched, the writing swam into English, thanks to the TARDIS, but it still didn't help him much.
"Uh…fully? About two minutes."
"Two minutes?" Barry hissed at him.
"This is a cruise liner, not a fighter!" the young man protested. "Standard procedure is to power the shields at the beginning of the voyage, then keep them up for the entire trip! And this is a big ship! It takes a lot of power!"
"Okay, okay," Barry told him, channeling some of the authority he'd put on as a resistance leader during the Year That Never Was. "Calm down. Can you move the ship out of the way of the asteroids, then?"
The young man sniffled and breathed deeply.
"Yeah. Yeah. Hang on."
He turned towards the controls and spun the wheel, but Barry's eyes widened as he saw the meteors turn to follow them!
"Get down!" he shouted.
Then the world shook, and both young men were thrown off their feet. Barry rolled and braced both of them into a corner, and clung on for dear life as the ship shuddered like it was in the epicenter of an earthquake.
As the shaking subsided, Barry heaved himself up cautiously, looked around to make sure they were in no immediate danger. His gaze fell on the captain, and he saw that a piece of debris had crashed down on the man, ending his career for good. Barry sighed and closed his eyes for a second. True, the man had caused the ship to crash, causing God knew how many deaths and injuries, but…he was still a person. Had been a person. One who, if the look on his face right before Barry had clobbered him was any indication, greatly regretted what he did.
Shaking his head, Barry turned to the surviving crewman.
"Right, what's your name?"
"Midshipman Frame. Uh, Alonso."
"Barry Allen," the speedster said, shaking his hand. "Hang on."
He touched a hand to his earpiece.
"Doctor, you there? You okay?"
"Barry! Thank goodness, you alright?"
"Yeah. Me and the Midshipman, we're fine. You?"
"Yeah, fine, yeah, good. What's the situation up there?"
Barry flashed a look at the Midshipman, raising his eyebrows. The man shuffled over and looked over at the engines.
"Oxygen flow is holding," he reported, which Barry repeated. "But the engines…Oh my Vot. They're cycling down."
"That's a nuclear storm drive, yeah?" the Doctor's voice came over the comms, and Barry just knew the look on his friend's face without needing to see it.
"Yeah," the midshipman confirmed, and he and Barry exchanged a look as the Doctor told them that if the ship hit, the explosion would wipe out all life on Earth.
"Midshipman, I need you to fire up the engine containment field and feed it back into the core," he ordered, over the young man's protests, and Barry repeated what his mentor was telling him. "It'll keep the engines going until I can get to the bridge. Barry?"
"Yeah."
"Scout around the ship. See if you can rescue anyone who's trapped under debris or anything, get them all together, somewhere safe. Let me know where you're going, I'll bring this group 'round, and I'll head up to the bridge. We'll meet up there and work out how to stop the ship from crashing. Got it?"
"Got it."
"Good luck."
The comms clicked off, and Barry nodded to Midshipman Frame. "Okay, is there a way to see who's still alive? Scan for life forms?"
"Yeah, if I can, um, reverse the scanner…"
The crewman tapped a few controls, and up popped a diagram of the ship, with red dots blinking all around. Barry stared at them, eyes flicking over the map as he considered the best routes. "Fifty, sixty people still alive! That's great!"
He pointed. "Wait, what's that?"
The Midshipman leaned over his shoulder. "That blacked-out area on Deck 31? That's weird. That's nothing, though, that's just Host storage, there shouldn't be anything there."
"Huh," Barry muttered. "Okay, first things first, but not necessarily in that order. Not enough room for everyone on the bridge..."
He toggled his communication link again. "Okay, Doctor, listen, there's not enough room for everyone up here, but if you keep heading starboard, you'll come to what looks like a big lounge. I'm gonna take everyone else there myself."
"All right. Be careful, Barry. We still don't know why the captain crashed the ship."
"I'll be as careful as you always are," the speedster promised, smirking as he heard the Doctor sigh.
"Very funny, Barry. See you in a flash."
Five minutes later, the speedster had reunited with the Time Lord in the lounge, and they hugged tightly. All of the other fifty-two survivors sat or stood in the corner, most looking shell-shocked. Unfortunately, some had died before Barry could reach them, and he'd had to rescue several of them from under debris, either phasing them out or using his vibrating hand or cyclones from his arms to break or shift the rubble, but overall, every life saved was a victory.
"You all right?" the Doctor asked, looking his friend up and down as Barry went to the food table and starting stuffing his face to make up for the calories he'd burned. He turned around and met the Doctor's gaze.
"No, not really. All those people…"
"Yeah, I know."
In between bites, he told the Doctor about the blacked-out area of Deck 31. "Something's going on, something big," the Doctor muttered, running a hand through his unruly hair.
"I figured, yeah."
"Can you investigate while I head up to the bridge? We need to stop the ship from crashing."
"What about the TARDIS?" Barry asked. "Can we use it to tow the ship, or something?"
The Doctor shook his head sharply, grimacing. "It got knocked loose in the explosion. It'll have settled down on Earth by now."
"Fantastic," Barry grumbled, then whipped around as several Host walked in.
"Host! Great!" Astrid beamed, but then her smile turned upside down as they lined up and began taking off their halos.
"Why…why are they doing that?" Mr. Copper asked.
"Host! What are you doing?" a junior steward snapped.
"Information," one of them said in a mellifluous voice. "Kill. Kill. Kill."
And, as one, they drew back their halos, and cast them at the survivors. Barry lunged into action, catching or punching aside each of the dozen razor-sharp halos (doing so carefully after he sliced his hand on one), then returning to normal time to stand in between the Host and the survivors. The Doctor had drawn his group over to the corner to stand with them, behind Barry.
"Host, why are you doing this?" the steward cried.
"Information," the leader spoke again. "We have new orders. Kill all survivors."
And they started forwards, clearly intent on slaughtering the passengers with their bare hands.
"Yeah," Barry told them. "No."
And he lunged forward, plunging his vibrating hands into the heads of two of the Host. The others turned to face him in slow motion, but he ducked and dove and slashed with his hands, feeling kind of like Bruce Lee, and before long, there were a dozen broken robots lying on the floor around him.
"Oh my Vot," Astrid breathed. "How did you…"
"Not important now," the Doctor broke in. "Okay, Barry, take me up to the bridge, then come back here and guard the other survivors. Mr. Copper, you've got staff access to the computer. Log in and see if you can get out an SOS."
"What about whatever's on Deck 31?"
"Once I've stabilized the engines, we can investigate that," the Doctor promised. "But we need to keep everyone safe. Astrid, you stay here. Get a barricade set up."
"Good luck."
Barry pulled up his cowl and wrapped his arm around the Doctor's waist.
"Be right back," he promised, and they vanished.
"Blimey," said Mr. Copper.
Having dropped off the Doctor on the bridge and warned Midshipman Frame about the Host, a burst of reddish-orange lightning shot throughout Deck 31, covering most of the room, before slowing to a halt. On the Master's Earth, if you didn't scout around before entering a room, you often wouldn't walk out under your own power, if you did at all. Several friends of his had learned that lesson the hard way.
He sped to a stop in the middle of the room, gazing around at the debris and little and not-so-little fires.
"Wow. Okay. This is what they call a fixer-upper, huh?"
He passed by a nearly-vertical bed with clamps, which Barry assumed was where they put malfunctioning Hosts. Now all of them aren't working-except that would be one heck of a coincidence, so most likely they've been reprogrammed. But by who? The captain? Only got to see him for a second, but he looked like he really regretted shooting Alonso, never mind reprogramming all the Host to go all murder-y. Possible, but more likely someone was putting him under some kind of pressure.
He glanced around and spotted a solid-looking pair of double doors, which his incredible intellect and well-honed deductive ability told him was probably where the blacked-out portion of the deck was. The full-spectrum scanner in his eyepieces reported an absolute blank in terms of any kind energy leaking out.
"Likely shielded. There has to be some kind of…"
Barry leaned forward and pressed what the Doctor would've called a "sticky-out bit" on top of one of the black-and-yellow pillars next to the door. Naturally, they slid back with lots of hissing and belching of smoke.
"Some kind of protective chamber?" Barry theorized, watching a kind of robotic cart roll forwards out of the smoke.
"You'd need to build it to survive a ship crash and an explosion big enough to wipe out life on Earth, which would take a heck of a lot of power. You'd need to be really rich. And I know that because…"
For a moment, Barry flashed back to another head in a glass cage, a long time ago and far in the future. This one, however, spoke out loud.
"My name is Max," it said, with the gold tooth gleaming.
"Wow, it actually does that?"
Who the hell are you, and how the hell did you get in here?" the head snapped.
"Barry Allen. And I don't need to guess who you are. Max Capricorn, the one and only. Nice wheels. Life support system?"
"Indeed. In a society that despises cyborgs, I've had to hide away for years, running the company by hologram," the man snarled. "But no matter. Tell me, why should I not order you killed right now?"
"Oh, you don't want to kill me!" Barry protested. "I know lots of stuff. Like, how to get ahead in business. Geddit? Ahead in business?"
"Oho," Capricorn said. "The office joker, I see."
"Yeah," Barry said. "But I'm not just a joker; I'm the ace in the hole. Another thing I know; you were the one who tried to sink this ship. Made the captain shoot poor Mr. Frame."
"Obviously," the head snapped. "Who?"
"And with that, you just lost any mercy I might've had," Barry shot right back. "But why? The classic insurance scam? Or did the Earth do something to you? Is that it? Revenge?"
"This interview is terminated," Capricorn told him, making to turn away.
"No, don't do that!" Barry insisted, running in front of him. "Look, we're probably all going to die anyway, so why not get it off your chest? Sorry, bad choice of words."
"Oh, very well."
Capricorn rolled towards him. Barry, though, refused to take a step back, looking him in the eye.
"You were right, Mr. Allen. Revenge. But not on the Earth. On my company."
"Your…company?"
"My own board voted me out," Capricorn snarled. "Stabbed me in the back."
"If you had a back," Barry shrugged. As he spoke, his voice deepened and grew colder. "So, no, don't tell me, let me guess. You crash the ship…kill all the survivors, wipe out everyone on Earth for a bonus, and bingo! Total scandal. Stocks crash, business is wiped out, board is humiliated. And you can ride it out, safe in your life support chamber thing. Get someone to retrieve you from the ruins, pull up a few side bank accounts, and you're settled for life. Am I warm?"
"Boiling," Max admitted as he rolled closer and closer to Barry, who still refused to budge an inch. "And I will retire to the beaches of Penhaxico Two, where the ladies, so I'm told, are very fond of…metal."
Barry inhaled, then exhaled, and when he spoke again, it was in a low, quiet, cold, and utterly furious tone of voice.
"Well, Max Capricorn, it looks like you lose. The Doctor's fixing the engines as we speak, he's gonna save this ship and everyone on the planet below, and we're gonna stop you, all because you can't even sink the Titanic!"
"What?"
The cyborg spun himself around, and peered over the edge of the balcony. "The engines are still running? Well, too bad—because I can cancel the engines from here!"
The ship lurched, alarms sounded, and Barry staggered to keep his footing.
"You can't do this!" he snapped, but at Max's command, a pair of Hosts came out of the shadows and grabbed hold of his arms.
"Not so clever now, Mr. Allen. A shame we couldn't work together," he mused. "You're rather good. All that banter yet not a word wasted. Time for me to retire. The Titanic is falling. The sky will burn. Let the Christmas inferno commence. Oh. Oh, Host. Kill him."
"Oh, I don't think so," Barry snapped, and, phasing his arms free of the Host's grip, disappeared in a burst of wind and lightning.
"Where'd he go?"
"Right here," Barry answered him, speeding back into sight. He raised the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, borrowed from its owner, and pointed it at Max Capricorn's life-support system. The system hissed, and smoke shot out of the machine.
"No! What…I…"
He shuddered, jerked, and froze still.
"Stasis mode," Barry told him. "Keep you frozen until we can get the officials here, and the Doctor's already sent a shutdown command to the Host through the main computer. Your plan is done."
With one last look around, he sped up to the bridge.
"Ah, Barry!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Good job."
"Thanks," he nodded, scratching his neck. "What's up with the engines?"
"Once we enter the atmosphere, I can use the heat of ignition to reactivate the secondary storm drive," he explained as the ship hurtled towards Earth, alarms sounding as the ship plunged into the planet's cloud layer.
"Go warn the passengers."
Barry nodded and ran off again, and was back in seconds, his face long and drawn. The Doctor didn't notice, too busy on the controls as Alonso pulled up a scan showing their impact zone. The Doctor glanced over and groaned.
"Is that…"
"Barry, the phone," he snapped, nodding, and the speedster picked it up, dialing the number his friend snapped out, then the Doctor nodded, and Barry slipped the phone onto his shoulder, the Doctor cradling it against his ear as he wrestled with the wheel. "Oh, hello. Yes, could you get me Buckingham Palace? Listen to me! Security code 771! Now get out of there!"
In the distance, a red-and-blue blur streaked by the ship, followed by a second.
"Are those birds?" Alonso asked.
"Or planes?" the Doctor put in.
"Neither," Barry smiled wanly.
Alonso gasped as the ship seemed to slow down somewhat. Barry waved at the young man and woman pushing against the Titanic's nose, and the Doctor tapped a finger to his forehead in salute. Clark grinned and nodded back at him, and Kara blew Barry a kiss, which he returned. "That's my girlfriend and her cousin."
"Engines active," the computer announced. The Doctor let out a yell of effort, leaning almost straight back as he wrestled with the wheel. The ship shuddered, slowed…and leveled out, beginning to soar back up into the atmosphere. The Doctor grinned at them, and the Midshipman grinned back and rang a bell as they flew slowly back into space. Kara and Clark waved again as they returned to space, Kara making a call me motion with her fingers. Barry nodded and kissed his hand to her.
Once they'd achieved Earth orbit, the Time Lord and the midshipman worked together to stabilize the engines as Barry helped where he could. "Phew," the Doctor sighed. "Everyone's safe."
"Not everyone," Barry told him, and for the first time, the Doctor noted how weary his friend looked. "What's wrong, Barry?"
The speedster bowed his head. "Doctor, when I went back to the lounge…while I was confronting Max…the Host had broken in. Turns out Bannakafallatta is a cyborg…from what they said, he detonated an EMP to destroy all of them, but they'd already slaughtered five other people."
The Doctor looked at him, and Barry saw the depths of centuries of pain and sadness in those eyes. "Astrid…"
Barry shook his head. "She sacrificed herself for that jerk Rickston Slade. I'm sorry."
The Doctor closed his eyes, and the two men held each other tightly.
In the lounge, the survivors looked at each other. Midshipman Frame announced that the engines had been stabilized and that the rescue ship would arrive soon. Mr. Copper regretfully resigned himself to jail, and Rickston Slade cheerfully announced that at least the loss of Capricorn's stock had made him rich. Barry, Mr. Copper, and the Doctor watched him walk away, talking on his mobile communications device.
"Of all the people to survive, he's not the one you would have chosen, is he?" the elderly man said, casting a glance over to where a small group of shrouded bodies lay. "But if you could choose, Doctor, if you decide who lives and who dies, that would make you a monster."
The three stood quietly, each lost in their own thoughts for a minute, before the Doctor twisted around with a teleport bracelet in hand.
"Mr. Copper, I think you deserve one of these."
Alonso threw them a salute, which Barry and the Doctor cheekily returned, before they beamed down to the planet far below.
In the distance, the lights of a city twinkled, and three men walked across a field towards the reassuring presence of the TARDIS.
"So, Great Britain is part of Europey, and just across the British Channel, you've got Great France and Great Germany," Mr. Copper frowned.
"No, no, it's just, it's just France and Germany. Only Britain is Great," the Doctor corrected him. Barry sniggered, but didn't argue.
"Oh, and they're all at war with the continent of Ham Erica," he continued.
"No. Well, not yet," the Doctor corrected him, and Barry shot him a nervous look, eyebrows raised. The Doctor either didn't see or ignored him, instead hurrying up to the TARDIS and patting her sides. Barry ran a hand along the ship as well, smiling quietly, as Mr. Copper hypothesized that the "snow" around them was actually the Titanic's ballast.
"Yeah," the Doctor opined. "One of these days it might snow for real."
"Who knows?" Barry shrugged. "What about you?"
"Oh, I'm…I'm not really sure," the man shrugged.
"Give me that credit card," the Doctor ordered, reaching out. As the ship's historian handed it over, he shrugged that he hadn't really known how much to put on it for trinkets, so he'd just gone for a million.
"Pounds?" Barry gasped.
"Mr. Copper, a million pounds is worth fifty million credits," the Doctor told him.
"How much?"
"Fifty million and fifty six."
Barry and the Doctor grinned at each other as Mr. Copper cheered about being able to own an actual house with windows and a kitchen and a garden.
"Doctor, I will make you proud."
"Good luck," Barry smiled, shaking his hand. "Where are you going?"
"Why, I have no idea!"
He hurried off through the snow.
"Will he be okay?" Barry asked his friend, and the Doctor smiled at him.
"He'll be magnificent."
They waved one last time, then slipped into the TARDIS, which slowly disappeared, leaving nothing but a square shape in the grass, one that was already beginning to fill up with snow.
So, yeah, I thought about leaving Astrid alive, but given how much she wanted to travel with the Doctor, it'd just be an additional complication, especially with...spoilers! ;)
For those who may feel that Barry's conversation with the Doctor is redundant, given that the Doctor discussed this topic with Jack in Utopia, bear in mind Barry doesn't know they had that conversation.
I did seriously consider having this lead to more of a rift between them. It would be appropriate, given that one of the meanings of the Lightning-Struck Tower tarot card is a broken pedestal (along with danger, crisis, change, liberation, and revelations, all of which I thought quite appropriate-hence the name of this book).
However, Barry is, in every version of himself, a genuinely sweet and kind person, even without being mentored and influenced by the Doctor. He's not the type to hold grudges-heck, his comics self even let go of his grudge against Thawne eventually! The Doctor explained his reasoning and apologized, Barry could tell from their interactions that Jack had pretty much forgiven him, and since that's the case, he's not going to beat it into the ground. And from a real-life standpoint, Book 1 is drawing to a close, and carrying extra emotional baggage would not have been particularly helpful for me or the characters.
I thought about having the Doctor not tell Barry about his future life as a speedster, but honestly, it's not really a big spoiler that Barry's going to be a hero. And you'll notice how little the Doctor has actually said...
As for that 'thing' Wilf referred to in America, those who have seen the first episode of the Flash can probably guess. For those who can't, I'll just say it was briefly alluded to in Chapter 39, and will appear in Book II.
