Daughter Who Chapter 5 - A Bleak Prophecy, a doctor who fanfic

Disclaimer: I do not own anything pertaining to Doctor Who.

Everything else and story line by me but of course they're set in the Dr. Who Universe so I still hold no rights to them.

Story takes place somewhere in the 11th Doctor Era. I hope you enjoy it!

Rating: It's perfectly safe for the whole family, like the show. So don't worry.

PART 5: A Bleak Prophecy

It was hard to convince Amy to leave, and Rory would stick with her. But the Doctor managed it. They were nice and compassionate, telling Annabella to keep her hopes up and never despair, they had seen the future being re-written dozens of time.

She smiled but was sad to see them go. The Doctor left her in the Tardis alone while he escorted the couple back to their home. It took him some minutes to return.

"I'd still prefer that they stayed," she admitted, hearing the Doctor closing the door to the Tardis.

"Me too," he told her, looking at her with a grin of agreement. He then broke eye contact and moved to handle his controls.

"Can you explain it to me now, Doctor?"

He stopped and turned. And paused.

"Ah," he seemed to remember, "yes, I suppose you deserve to know what's going on."

"I…yes, I think so? Do we have time?"

The Doctor's eyes looked up and to the side in thought.

"Yes. I've explained what the Bleaks are, correct?"

"Yes. They have a bio…they're connected to the machines at a deep level. And they want to conquer entire systems."

"Hm, yes, that was before I got another good look at them. The Bleaks have a connection to their machines of the likes I've never seen. It surpasses a psychic link, you know? The machines…they're clearly alive but they're not biotechnology and…I'm not really sure who the Bleaks are anymore. Is the machine ridden by the flesh or does the flesh provide the power for the machine to live, being no more important than a heart is to you."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the Bleak inside the machine shouldn't short-circuit along with the machine," he pondered, looking around in thought again, "his brain, sure, maybe takes a jolt and pass out, depends on the cranial substance, but all its nerves? The muscles and the organs, they also went haywire. I didn't notice the first time because Jack killed the Bleak, but now it's clear. And you," he looked at her, but immediately seemed to mentally slap himself in the face, jerking it around, "I mean, Empress Christie. She registered as a machine. The same life signs, it's just…confusing."

"But why her? Why me?"

He looked at her, realizing he detoured his thoughts to what he didn't know. She was starting to realize that was his favorite thing: thinking about what he didn't know.

"Right then, apologies. The Bleaks have a prophecy about an alien, well, alien to them. This alien would look different on the outside but he would be them on the inside. They believe this alien to be their Alexander the Great. As another prophecy unfolded, one about the end of the universe - the silence that will fall - the Bleaks became more aggressive about finding their alien."

She blinked while he approached her, continuing, "they came out of their ages-old hiding and started scouting the universe. And later, they started kidnapping aliens and analyzing them to see if they were it. Again, aliens tothem. Oh and they killed those who weren't their great leader," he made a fist, "this is when Captain Jack called on me to kill them all if need be," he unmade his fist, and smiled awkwardly, "but I only wanted to stop them. And that's what we did."

Annabella heard it, already seeing where this train of thought was going to end up at, but completely clueless as to how.

"In any case, eventually, they came to Earth."

She blinked and he was right in front of her. He put his hands on her shoulders, talking to her earnestly, like giving her bad news.

"Jack didn't understand but I did. All their technology is alive, especially their main mother ship, which is as alive as you or me, Anna. It's a part of that biological existence, you understand? All their technology is as alive as those who pilot it, and from what I saw today, it…seems to have a conscience."

She blinked again, her mind a void receptive to everything he was saying.

"The moment they brought you into one of their ships, it knew who you were. It then teleported you to the mother ship. We ran into you, Anna, because their whole fleet had initiated preparations protocol, and we needed to stop it."

"Preparation?" Annabella asked.

"For war. They had found their prophesized leader, you understand? But I stole you away from them. And crippled them, too. But the point is you're it. Their leader, their Alexander the Great, Empress Christie!" He let her go, spinning once in frustration.

"But…that's impossible! I'm me, I was born like everyone else, I—"

"Yes, of course you were," he told her, coming back to her, lowering his head to look her in the eye, and using a tone of grave compassion. "Your father was a man, your mother was a woman, they're your parents, you're human…it's just that you're also something more."

"I…" she blinked, her heart racing, "I still…how am I something more?"

"I dunno," he opened his arms in protest. "I had hoped they had made a mistake. That at the least, they would give up. But they didn't, did they? No, nobody ever listens to me. Nobody ever listens to their Doctor. That's as true anywhere as it is on your Earth."

"What do you mean? They didn't return for me."

"Yes they did," he said, hopping back to his controls.

"But…you're the one who—"

"Think about it, Anna," he requested, interrupting her, "your future self is with them. And it knew about us, about me rescuing my friends. What you don't know is that she, Empress Christie, kidnapped them without provocation. We weren't trying to stop them or anything, we were at a resort having a drink. Somehow, they were kidnapped and I managed to flee."

That had been exactly what Christie had assumed.

"She kidnapped them and locked them in a jail full of locks I couldn't get past," he looked behind at her, displeased, "something also very odd," he looked back at a particular screen, squinting his eyes in concentration.

"All so I'd need to get you and bring you. But I didn't even know the Bleaks were on the move 'till Amy and Rory were gone and she contacted me."

"I'm lost, what does that mean?"

"That she's fighting a time war, Annabella. So the start to this all was that the bleaks went back for you, probably while I was otherwise preoccupied, and converted you to the Empress. So I went to the past and saved you from them, or tried, but they can time-travel too, apparently. Or worse," he interrupted hmself, "survive a time change." He paused for a few seconds.

It was a long and uncomfortable pause; his hands stopped, his whole body halted as his brain worried about thinking alone. It had occurred to him then, it seemed, and now he couldn't believe, or estimate, how or what consequences would derive from such a thing.

"I'm sorry," he mentally snapped back, "where was I? Oh yes, so she, or they, went to the past and fought me. Or I blundered and got you converted, or transformed - all the same - and from then on, it's been a back and forth and back and forth, for generations of ourselves, until she managed to lock me into a set of actions that guarantees her victory."

Annabella blinked, this time to close her eyes. She massaged her head in thought.

"So all this has happened before?"

"She can't travel in time, not like me I don't think, but she gets enough from your experience. She probably knows and remembers this very conversation. Or perhaps the Doctor she knew ignored her and took Amy and Rory along. That would be a good thing."

"I think I understand. It's like a chess game where she already saw our moves, and as long as she makes the same moves she saw herself make, the game will develop in the same way."

"Unless we can break free of the box," the Doctor said, smirking excitedly at her. "In a way, I'm not actually trying to beat the empress as I am trying to outdo myself! Only by doing better than I did before will we defeat her. And together, we can do it!"

In the midst of confusion and despair, Annabella had to admit she still felt...pride. Empress Christie was, in a way, her, and she had really thought this whole thing through.

"Break free of the box?"

"Think outside the box, you know the expression, right? You should, humans came up with it. And with good reason. You know prejudice? It means thinking within a judgment that was made before actually thinking about it. Any thought that is prejudiced to a limitation, even our capacity, is thinking inside the box. If we can think outside the box, we can mess up her plans, and at the very least leave some more leeway for some other us to defeat her," he smiled mischievously.

"But won't anything we think about mirror our past decisions?"

"We need to ignore our preferred notions. We need to think and consider only those we wouldn't think to consider…"

"But we'll still arrive at the same answers we would have arrived before, won't we?"

Her head was aching now. Since it was all really heavy stuff to think about, it was like metal sheets were making knots in her head using the flexibility of an anvil, but the Doctor seemed to be enjoying it.

"We have a big advantage, though, Anna. For every new move we make, she has to adjust her plan, adjust her moves. And our big advantage? We only have to win once."

She saw his gaze and couldn't keep herself from smiling. How could he be so optimistic?

"She has to keep winning," she heard herself say. He smiled wider.

"Exactly, we just need to win once!"

He then sort of shivered, his eyes lighting up with an idea. He leaped and grabbed a lever, pulling it. The Tardis rumbled so hard it almost threw Annabella to the ground.

"Whoah, what is it? Where are we going now?"

"Where we shouldn't. More importantly, where we wouldn't."

She looked puzzled.

"To their mother ship," the Doctor said. And that surprised her.

"What? Why?"

"Did you hear us talk?" He asked. "We talked about you, the Empress, that she had to be defeated, that we needed to beat her. Us and her, her and us, she playing the game of chess she saw herself lose."

"So?"

He smiled victoriously at her.

"So we're not gonna beat her at all. It's not her we want, Anna, it's the bloke who set up the chess board!"

She opened her eyes in realization.

"The machines read as an intelligent life-form, Anna. Like a conscious, rational, intelligent life-form. Why do they need the actual Bleaks, then? Are they nothing more than a power source? Or do they serve some more necessary purpose?"

"But the mother ship is where they sent me…to transform me into the Empress."

The Doctor grinned wide, proud.

"So that's where we'll get to the bottom of who our true enemy is. If we defeat whoever's setting up the game for us to play-"

"Who's winning won't matter!" She blurted out, excited.

"A tie by default and everyone goes home happy and alive," he span, shaking a bit as if on the verge of starting a dance.

He didn't, however, he stopped to face Annabella with his arms open.

"Just the way I like it!"

Part End: Thank you for reading, please consider leaving a review if you have the time.

Next up, they take the fight to the main villain! It won't go well at all.

Also don't worry, the story is fully written. Next update will come up next week, God willing.