The End is Coming

The TARDIS landed back on Earth and the Doctor ran outside, his two companions running after him. He hadn't explained what was happening, just run to the console and started piloting them. Eventually, they'd gotten him to say Earth, and that the woman was Rose Tyler, but that was it.

They'd appeared on a suburban street, and the Doctor paused, breathing heavily. "It's fine. Everything's fine. Nothing's wrong, all fine." He glanced at a milk cart that had stopped nearby. "Excuse me. What day is it?"

"Saturday," the man responded.

The Doctor nodded. "Saturday. Good. Good, I like Saturdays."

"So, we just met Rose Tyler?" Donna asked.

"Yeah."

Caroline frowned. "You said she was locked in a parallel world."

"Exactly. If she can cross from her parallel world to your parallel world, than that means the walls of the universe are breaking down, which puts everything in danger. Everything." He frowned. "But how?" He turned and walked back to the TARDIS console.

His companions walked up on the other side. "The thing is, Doctor," Donna said, choosing her words carefully, looking between the Doctor and Caroline, "no matter what's happening, and I'm sure it's bad, I get that but…Rose is coming back. Isn't that good?"

The Doctor paused, glancing up at Caroline. The woman wasn't looking at him, instead at the screen in front of her, reading the numbers that flashed across it. "Yeah."

The TARDIS shook and they all fell to the floor. "What the hell was that?"

"Don't know." The Doctor pushed himself up. "It came from outside." He ran to the door and pulled it open, revealing that they were now in outer space. Rocks floated near them.

Donna came up to his shoulder while Caroline frowned at the scanner, thankful it happened to be displaying the data in English. "But we're in space. How did that happen? What did you do?"

"We haven't moved," Caroline called, making the Doctor turn and run back to her. "I think we're fixed."

He shook his head. "It can't have…no." He looked out the doors. "The TARDIS is still in the same place, but the Earth has gone. The entire planet. It's gone."

Donna's eyes widened. "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?"

He could only shake his head again. "I don't know, Donna. I just don't know. I'm sorry, I don't know."

"That's my family," she breathed. "My whole world."

He typed a few things searching for any sign of where the planet had gone, even who had taken it. But there was nothing. Literally nothing. "There's no readings. Nothing. Not a trace. Not even a whisper." He leaned back. "Oh, that is fearsome technology."

"What do we do?" Caroline asked.

The Doctor stepped back from the TARDIS console, staring at some point on the ground. "We've got to get help?"

"From where?"

He looked up. "Caroline, Donna, I'm taking you to the Shadow Proclamation. Hold tight." He turned and flipped a lever, sending them all off into space, though this time everyone had actually managed to hold onto something so that they didn't fall again. The TARDIS shook, more than it normally did, because the Doctor was panicking.

"So go on then," Donna prompted once the Doctor finally stepped away from the controls, the TARDIS stilling, "what is the Shadow Proclamation anyway?"

He shrugged. "Posh name for police. Outer space police." He nodded, holding out a hand for Caroline, and she took it without thinking. "Here we go."

Together, they stepped out into a pure white corridor, though the Doctor wasn't able to hold Caroline's hand much longer because they were greeted by a group of armed aliens. Caroline swore that they looked like rhinos, but outer-space rhinos. The three of them held their hands up in obvious surrender.

"Sco bo tro no flo jo ko fo to to," one of the aliens said.

"No bo ho sho ko ro to so." He frowned slightly, focusing. "Bo-ko-do-o-go-bo-fo-po-jo." All of the aliens stood to attention, lowering their weapons. "Moho."

The aliens motioned for them to follow and led them to another white room with a small computer and an albino woman in a dark gown. The Doctor very quickly identified her as the Shadow Architect.

"Time Lords are the stuff of legend," the woman said, turning to face the Doctor. "They belong in the myths and whispers of the Higher Species. You," she sneered, "cannot possibly exist."

The Doctor shrugged. "Yeah. More to the point, I've got a missing planet."

"Then you're not as wise as the stories would say. The picture is far bigger than you imagine. The whole universe is in outrage, Doctor. Twenty-four worlds have been taken from the sky."

His eyes widened, and even his companions were shocked, the two women looking at each other. "How many…Which ones? Show me."

The Architect gestured for the Doctor to join her at the computer screen. The companions came beside them, reading the information scrolling across the screen. "Locations range far and wide, but all disappeared at the exact same moment, leaving no trace."

"Callufrax Minor," the Doctor read. "Jahoo. Shallacatop. Women Wept. Clom." He frowned. "Clom's gone? Who'd want Clom?"

"All different sizes. Some populated, some not. But all unconnected."

Donna frowned. "What about Pyrovillia?"

The Architect turned to look at them like she hadn't seen them before. "Who are the females?"

"Donna. And this is Caroline." The woman gave a small wave. "We're human beings. Maybe not the stuff of legend but every bit as important as Time Lords, thank you."

"Lucius said Pyrovillia had gone missing," Caroline said, remembering what they'd heard in Pompeii."

"Pyrovillia is cold case," one of the rhino aliens, Judoon the Doctor had said, informed them. "Not relevant."

Donna narrowed her brows. "How do you mean, cold case?"

"The planet Pyrovillia cannot be part of this," the Architect explained. "It disappeared over two thousand years ago."

"Yes, yes, hang on. But there's the Adipose breeding planet, too." Caroline nodded along with what Donna said. "Miss Foster said that was lost, but that must've been a long time ago."

The Doctor grinned widely. "That's it! Donna, brilliant!" he turned back to the computer, typing a bit. "Planets are being taken out of time as well as space. Let's put this into 3D." Behind them, holograms of all the missing planets appeared, drifting in the air. "Now, if we add Pyrovillia and Adipose Three." The two planets appeared, but the Doctor frowned. "Something missing. Where else…where else, where else? Where else lost…"

Caroline's eyes widened, remembering Midnight, before everything had gone wrong. "Poosh! The Lost Moon of Poosh."

He cheered and added the planet. Almost instantly, every planet reorganized themselves into a seemingly random pattern, but Caroline knew it made sense. It had to make sense, there had to be a pattern.

"What did you do?"

The Doctor looked around at the planets. "Nothing. The planets rearranged themselves into the optimum pattern. Oh, look at that," he grinned. "Twenty planets in perfect balance. Come on, that is gorgeous."

Donna sighed. "Oi, don't get all spaceman. What does it mean?"

"All those worlds fit together like pieces of an engine. It's like a powerhouse. What for?"

"Who could design such a thing?"

The Doctor shook his head, thinking. "Someone tried to move the Earth once before. Long time ago. Can't be." He turned to look at the computer again, studying it.

Caroline and Donna looked at each other before moving closer to the stairs. They both wanted to help, somehow, but neither of them really knew how. Because the Doctor was focusing on everything else and he didn't really have any attention to focus on his companions, even Caroline.

Now, it was clear that the best thing to do was to stay out of the way until the Doctor turned to them for assistance.

The companions sat next to each other on the steps, watching the Doctor switch between talking with the Architect and working on the computer.

"How are you feeling?" Donna asked Caroline. She couldn't remember anything from the parallel world, it had all faded by now, but Caroline had remembered something, even if the world hadn't been focused around her. She didn't know how much Caroline still remembered by now.

Caroline rubbed her hands together. "I'm scared." She watched the Doctor for a moment. "He doesn't know what's happening, with this, with us."

Donna nodded. "He'll figure it out."

"Hopefully."

Another woman walked up to them, offering a tray with a bowl of water to them. "You need sustenance. Take the water, it purifies."

"Thanks," Donna said with a smile, though she didn't take it.

The woman frowned. "There was something on your back."

Both Donna and Caroline looked up suddenly, though it was Donna who spoke. "How do you know that?"

"You are something new."

She shook her head. "Not me. I'm just a temp. Shorthand, filing, hundred words per minute." She sighed. "Fat lot of good that is now. I'm no use to anyone."

"I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Yeah. Our whole planet's gone."

The woman shook her head. "I mean the loss that is yet to come." She moved up the steps between them. "God save you."

Before either of the companions could comment on what just happened, the Doctor hurried over to them, leaning on the railing. "Caroline, Donna, come on, think. Earth. There must've been some sort of warning. Was anything happening back in your day, like electrical storms, freak weather, patterns in the sky?"

Caroline frowned. There had been a few freak things, of course, but no one had bothered to make a connection between all of them, not even her. She hadn't even been paying that much attention, especially since her parents had just died. She hadn't even bothered to research about the missing bees…

"The bees…" she said, looking up again, just as the Doctor was about to walk away because Donna didn't remember anything. "Donna, you said the bees were disappearing."

The Doctor's eyes widened and he backed up, running a hand through his hair. "The bees disappearing. The bees disappearing. The bees disappearing!"

"How is that significant?" the Architect asked the Doctor, though he was too excited about whatever he'd just figured out.

The companions hurried over to him. "On Earth we had these insects," Donna tried to explain. "Some said it was pollution or mobile phone signals."

The Doctor shrugged, typing. "Or, they were going back home."

"Back home where?"

"Planet Melissa Majoria?"

Donna's eyes widened. "Are you saying bees are aliens?"

He shook his head. "Don't be so daft; not all of them. But if the migrant bees felt something coming, some sort of danger, and escaped?" He looked at the Architect. "Tandocca."

The woman's eyes widened. "The Tandocca Scale."

"Tandocca scale is the series of wavelengths used as carrier signals by migrant bees," the Doctor explained. "Infinitely small. No wonder we didn't see it. It's like looking for a speck of cinnamon in the Sahara, but look, there it is." A trail of blue light appeared on the computer screen. "The Tandocca trail. The transmat that moved the planets was using the same wavelength, we can follow the path."

"And find the Earth?" Donna asked, walking backward towards where they had left the TARDIS. "Well, stop talking and do it."

The Doctor grinned, grabbing Caroline's hand, and ran into the TARDIS. "I am!" He ran straight to the TARDIS console. "We're a bit late. The signal's scattered, but it's a start." He jumped back to the door. "I've got a blip. It's just a blip, but it's definitely a blip."

"Then according to the strictures of the Shadow Proclamation, I will have to seize your transport and your technology."

The Doctor frowned. "Oh, really? What for?"

"The planets were stolen with hostile intent. We are declaring war, Doctor, right across the universe, and you will lead us into battle."

He nodded, glancing back into the TARDIS for a second. "Right. Yes. Course I will. I'll just…go and get you a key." He turned and ran back in, setting the TARDIS off almost immediately.

It was less violent than it normally was, but all three of them were holding on, preparing for something to happen the further they went. However, after a few seconds, the TARDIS stopped dead, the time rotor almost freezing mid motion.

The Doctor looked up at it in confusion. "It's stopped."

"What do you mean?" Donna asked as the Doctor pulled himself up a bit more. "Is that good or bad? Where are we?"

He looked at the monitor in front of him. "The Medusa Cascade. I came here when I was just a kid, ninety years old." The companions came up on either side of him, looking at the nebula before them. "It was the center of a rift in time and space."

"So…where are the twenty-seven planets?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Nowhere. The Tandocca Trail stops dead." He stepped back and leaned against one of the pillars. "End of the line."

"So what do we do?" Donna turned to look at the Doctor. "Doctor, what do we do?" But the Time Lord was silent, staring at the console, at a loss of anything and everything. "Now don't do this to us. No, don't. Don't do this to us. Not now. Tell me, what are we going to do?" Donna shook her head. "You never give up. Please."

Caroline didn't know what to do. Because when the Doctor was confused, when the Doctor had no ideas, there was nothing either companion could do to help. They were just humans, he was the genius Time Lord. It didn't matter if he'd picked them as companions, if they noticed more things than normal humans. They couldn't help him now.

And it was painful because Earth was lost and they had no way of getting to it, to know that they couldn't help him.

But then a phone rang.

"Phone!" the Doctor shouted, eyes wide. He leapt around the console, grabbing Martha's phone. "Martha, is that you?" then he paused, eyes even wider if that was possible. "It's a signal."

"Can we follow it?" Caroline asked.

The Doctor grabbed his stethoscope and grinned widely. "Oh, just watch me." There was a second where he listened, focusing, before he looked up. "Got it. Locking up." He began to pilot, and this time the TARDIS shuttered, various things sparking all around them, and they clung to the console, though very quickly they stumbled back from that, since part of it went up in flames. "We're traveling through time," the Doctor called over the noise. "One second in the future. The phone call's pulling us through." The TARDIS shook again. "Three, two, one!"

The three of them screamed as the TARDIS move around them, holding tight to any bit that wasn't on fire. Slowly, the TARDIS slowed, and the Doctor pulled up the monitor again, grinning in relief. Caroline almost laughed; there they were, all twenty-seven planets.

"Twenty-seven planets," Donna said in relief. "And there's the Earth. But why couldn't we see them?"

"The entire Medusa Cascade has been put a second out of sync with the rest of the universe," the Doctor said, hand running through his hair "Perfect hiding place. Tiny little pocket of time. But we found them." There was a high pitched sound and the screen blurred, making the Doctor frown. "Ooo, ooo, ooo, what's that? Hold on, hold on." He twisted a knob. "Some sort of Subwave Network."

A second later all of the images cleared up enough that they could see the three different images. Caroline recognized Martha from seeing her in person, but she didn't know who the other two were, though she did have a guess.

The Doctor had told her and Donna about most of his past companions after Martha, even shown them pictures of the ones they might encounter. One of the screens featured a woman Caroline was almost certain was Sarah Jane Smith, and the other had someone named Captain Jack Harkness.

"Where the hell have you been?" Jack glared at the Doctor, clearly annoyed that the man hadn't been present until now. "Doctor, it's the Daleks."

"Oh, he's a bit nice," a woman with Jack commented, frowning. "I thought he'd be older."

The other man frowned as well. "He's not that young."

"It's the Daleks," Sarah Jane Smith said again. "They're taking people to their spaceship."

"It's not just Dalek Caan," Martha added, and then she and Sarah Jane began to talk over themselves, both adding information about the current situation on Earth. Caroline and Donna couldn't quite follow it, but it looked like the Doctor did, given his growing smile, though she had a feeling that was more because he was seeing a group of his old companions all working together to protect the Earth.

"Sarah Jane," the Doctor cut in. "Who's that boy? That must be Torchwood. Oh, they're brilliant. Look at you all, you clever people!"

Donna pointed at the screen. "That's Martha." The woman laughed and waved. "And Captain Jack!"

The Doctor grimaced slightly, making Caroline laugh. "Don't. Just don't."

"It's like an outer space Facebook," Donna laughed.

"Everyone except Rose." The Doctor spoke quietly, just as the screen went white. "Oh."

"We've lost them."

He shook his head. "No, no, no, no, no. There's another signal coming through. There's someone else out there." He twisted the knob again. "Hello? Can you hear me? Rose?"

"Your voice is different, and yet its arrogance is unchanged." Caroline didn't recognize the voice, but instantly a shiver went down her spine, her stomach churning. A man, if Caroline could call him that, faded into sight on the screen. "Welcome to my new Empire, Doctor. It is only fitting that you should bear witness to the resurrection and the triumph of Davros, lord and creator of the Dalek race."

Caroline glanced at the Doctor, looking at the man just stare at the screen in shock. "Doctor…"

"Have you nothing to say?"

"Doctor, it's all right," Donna said, Caroline taking his hand. "We're…we're in the TARDIS. We're safe."

The Time Lord shook his head. "But you were destroyed. In the very first year of the Time War, at the Gates of Elysium. I saw your command ship fly into the jaws of the Nightmare Child. I tried to save you."

"But it took one stronger than you. Dalek Caan himself." The man, Davros, gestured to the side of him, where a sort of octopus mixed with Davros, something Caroline couldn't really describe, sat in the same type of shell as Davros. She felt sick, and not just because of how both aliens looked.

"I flew into the wind and fire," Dalek Caan said. "I danced and died a thousand times!"

"Emergency Temporal Shift took him back into the Time War itself," Davros explained.

The Doctor shook his head. "But that's impossible! The entire war is timelocked."

"And yet he succeeded. Oh, it cost him his mind, but imagine. A single, simple Dalek succeeded where Emperors and Time Lords have failed. A testament, don't you think, to my remarkable creations?"

"And you made a new race of Daleks." The Doctor's grip on her hand tightened.

"I gave myself to them, quite literally. Each one grown from a cell of my own body." He opened his tunic to reveal a rotten body, bare ribs and internal organs clearly visible. "New Daleks. True Daleks. I have my children, Doctor. What do you have, now?"

"After all this time…" the Doctor paused, clenching his teeth, "everything we saw, everything we lost, I have only one thing to say to you. Bye!" laughing, he pulled a lever and shut off the screen, sending them back down to Earth.

He didn't let go of Caroline's hand the entire time, not seeming to want to, not now.

They stepped out of the TARDIS together into an abandoned street, like everyone had just run for their lives, which Caroline didn't doubt. And it was quiet, so unnaturally quiet, like no humans were left on the Earth.

"Like a ghost town," Donna breathed.

"Sarah Jane said they were taking the people. What for?" he turned to Donna, not wanting to force Caroline to try and remember anything from yet another parallel world where she'd been in pain. "Think, Donna. When you met Rose in that parallel world, what did she say?"

"Just…the darkness is coming."

"Anything else?"

But Donna just looked over his shoulder at a point at the end of the street, nodding. "Why don't you ask her for yourself?"

The Doctor turned and, for the first time, Caroline actually saw Rose. True, they'd met in the parallel world, but Caroline hadn't really been paying attention to appearances then, she'd mainly been focusing on not going completely crazy. She was young, far younger than Caroline had expected. By the way the Doctor had spoken about her, Caroline had assumed she was older than her mid-twenties, which is what the girl appeared.

But, clearly, age didn't mean intelligence, if even one of the Doctor's stories of Rose were true. Though, his stories were probably a bit biased.

Though given the large gun Rose was holding, she must have been impressive.

The Doctor squeezed Caroline's hand one last time before stepping forward to run towards Rose. The two companions watched as the two neared each other, but suddenly Caroline was looking towards the side, watching one of the creatures she'd seen in the background of Davros's transmission slide into view.

But there wasn't anything she could do because then the Dalek was shouting "exterminate!" and the Doctor was turning, slowing his running instinctually, and then he was getting shot in the shoulder and falling to the ground.

Caroline and Donna ran forwards, hearing someone blast the Dalek to bits. Rose reached the Doctor first, grabbing him. "I've got you," she said as the two skid to a stop. "It missed you. Look, it's me, Doctor."

He smiled. "Rose."

Rose laughed. "Hi."

"Long time no see."

She nodded. "Yeah. Been busy, you know." The Doctor grew weaker in her arms and Caroline clung to Donna's arm. "Don't die. Oh, my God. Don't die! Oh my god, don't die!"

Jack ran up, grabbing the Doctor's shoulder. "Get him into the TARDIS, quick. Move." Caroline ran forwards, grabbing the Doctor with Rose, carrying him back towards the TARDIS as quickly as they could.

"What…what do we do?" Donna asked, Rose and Caroline laying the Doctor down on the grate. "There must be some medicine or something."

"Just step back," Jack said, coming around the console. "Rose, do as I say, and get back. He's dying and you know what happens next."

Caroline looked up at him, tears in her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"He can't."

Rose shook her head. "Oh, no. I came all this way."

"What do you mean?" Caroline didn't want to leave the Doctor, not now, not when he was dying, even though every part of her was telling her that he was an advanced alien race and that meant they had to have a way to cheat death, right? He was so brilliant and so wonderful that he couldn't just die here. "What happens next?"

The Doctor held up one of his hands, and Caroline stared at it in shock when it started to glow. "It's starting," he breathed, pain in his voice.

"Here we go," Jack said, running forward to grab Caroline and Rose, pulling them back. He hugged Rose to keep her from running, but Caroline stood a step in front of them all, watching the Doctor, feeling something so hot in her pocket it felt like it was burning her but she didn't look now, she didn't care now. "Good luck, Doctor."

"Will someone please tell us what is going on?" Donna asked.

"When he's dying," Rose said, voice shaking, as the Doctor pulled himself up on the console, "his er…his body, it repairs itself. It changes. But you can't!"

The Doctor looked up at the four of them. "I'm sorry, it's too late." He stepped away from the console. "I'm regenerating." And then he spread his arms wide, golden light streaming from his hands and head.

And the watch in Caroline's pocket felt like the sun.

A/N: Seems like something strange his happening with Caroline's watch.

Quick note: there are only two chapters left of this story before the next part of the series starts. The next one will hopefully be posted the same day as the last chapter of this, so it shouldn't be hard to find. Just wanted to give a heads up.