Title: Armageddon

Rating: T

Warnings: Major spoilers for "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords"; violence; mild language; allusions to rape (but I promise nothing explicit or graphic)

A/N: I am so sorry that this chapter took so long guys! I have an extremely good excuse though! My laptop fell and the screen is busted. I'm using my mom's at the moment and am unfortunately unable to get to anything I didn't already have backed up on a flash drive. Which means that I had to re-write about 1/3 of this chapter that I already had written. I also don't have access to ANY of my planning for this story or anything else I already had written so I'm not actually sure if this even follows 100% with what I had done.

I'm sorry for the delay! I'm going to try to get the next chapters out faster, but with the computer situation I can't make any guarantees. These chapters already take me a long time to write without the issues. *sigh*

Anyway. Hope you enjoy and please don't forget to review!

Armageddon:

Part III: The Year of Hell

Chapter Eighteen

Martha's breath hitched painfully in her chest. Her body ached from nights slept on the ground, in tight spaces and uncomfortable places. She'd stayed anywhere from abandoned homes and hotels to hiding in trees in the forest. She tried not to stay with the people in work camps too often, lest they be caught hiding her and killed for their kindness. Of course, in four long months she was beginning to wish that she had accepted more offers of warm beds.

The thought of her bed back home made her a bit dreamy as she remembered late mornings when she'd wake to the smells of her mother cooking downstairs and Tish and Leo arguing playfully. Her heart ached as she thought of her family. She missed them so much.

She shook her head and forced herself to focus. She had a job to do after all, and her time was steadily slipping away from her. She tried to move as fast as she could, getting the story out and pleading with people to spread the word as quickly as they could. It wasn't easy to keep things contained and yet get the story out. They couldn't risk open communications, but a network of hackers had banded together and began developing their own code so that the story and plan could slowly start to trickle out.

Martha hoped that would make her job easier as she travelled.

She'd already been through Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium and the vast majority of Europe along with making her way through Siberia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia as well as North and South Korea. She'd even been to some parts of Chine before backtracking to finish her way across Russia – she was in Moscow at the moment. Surveying the ancient city, she couldn't help but feel a bit sick.

She'd never seen Moscow outside of pictures in a history book, but she knew that it had been utterly destroyed. The Kremlin had been demolished to make way for the Master's weapons factories; Red Square was unrecognizable with the huge factories and work camps. Smoke hang thick in the air, giving the entire city a permanently early dawn-late evening look. The sun fought valiantly to illuminate the ground below, but it was a losing battle.

From where she was standing she could see the remnants of St. Basil's Cathedral. The impressive church was a shadow of itself – paint scrapped off and faded, windows shattered and boarded up, parts of the mighty towers and spires smashed or missing altogether. There were people making their way back to the work camps, Toclafane buzzing around their heads and guards standing stone-faced around the perimeter. It wasn't going to be easy for Martha to sneak her way into a camp.

The Master had been busy in the last few months, implanting his factories and putting his plans further into motion. If things stayed on tack, the earth would be ready for planetary war in eight months. Eight short months to stop the total destruction of the entire universe. Martha's gut clenched and she clutched at the TARDIS key at her throat, wishing for the Doctor's support. Or anyone's for that matter. She'd never felt so alone in all her life, despite the kind, brave people who assisted her and the friends and allies she'd made on her journey, she couldn't help feeling like everything was riding on her.

She'd been contact with Sarah Jane several times over the past months, catching up on everything. Sarah Jane and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, along with Torchwood Three and Sherlock were practically running the entire resistance in the eastern hemisphere and making contacts in the west as well.

Martha was worried when she heard that the majority of people in the west were still arming themselves for an attack on the Master. Sarah Jane tried to dissuade them, but they wanted the Master's head on a platter and Martha couldn't blame them. She only hoped they'd be able to convince them of its futility before anything bad happened. It wasn't as simple as just telling them they couldn't kill the Master, after all.

Martha had learned that the hard way already. Most everyone wanted the Master dead and it took a lot of talking and explaining to get them to see things otherwise. And looking at the desecrated, ancient capitol, Martha had a bad feeling it wasn't going to be easy to convince these people that they shouldn't seek revenge.

~/.\~

"This is pathetic," Dean muttered, tossing back the sawed-off shotgun he'd been examining. Henricksen, Sam and Adam all turned to frown at him from where Sam and Henricksen were teaching Adam to shoot. He'd had a bit of practice, but over the last few months they'd made the seventeen year old sit out any outing – using his injuries as a reason. Adam wasn't happy about being left out, especially considering Sam, Dean and Henricksen barely let their own wounds heal before working again.

They'd taken a couple of weeks to heal before re-embarking on their mission to find that safe house. After three days, they did find it, but it had been almost entirely cleaned out almost a week before. Toclafane had wiped out all but four cops who didn't come back to Rufus' with them, but who had since stayed in contact and helped them get into contact with several other safe houses as well.

Ash was quickly becoming their most important asset – if he hadn't been before – and had managed to get in contact with people from all over the world forming a resistance. He'd been talking closely with a group of agents in Virginia and they'd been working on a plan to take down the Master and eradicate the Toclafane problem as well.

So far, they hadn't gotten as far as they wanted on the "Kill the Master" plan and, apparently, were hearing from others that some "Doctor" had a plan to save them all, but that it wouldn't work with them killing the Master. They were skeptical about it, but then, so was everyone else. Dean and Gordon – for once – both agreed that they should proceed as planned until they had solid reasons not to.

The agents they'd been talking with seemed to know what they were doing and Henricksen knew a few of them – Agent Gibbs, Hotchner and Fornell he knew very well – but they were all still wary of each other.

They'd told them that they were hunters, but beyond that they had waited more than a week to give a proper answer and when they did – deciding that the truth might not be so insane given the circumstances – the agents had responded with the same incredulity as most people tended to when confronted with supernatural monsters. However, once Henricksen arrived and was able to confirm the stories, they eased into accepting it far more quickly than Dean had expected.

Of course, they hadn't mentioned that Dean and Sam Winchester were among them. Henricksen felt that was something that trained agents would probably need to see to believe. Especially agents like those in the BAU who had already worked up a psychological profile of the brothers.

"It's what we've got," Henricksen reminded him as he eyed their admittedly meager arsenal. They had been gathering as many weapons as they possibly could, but they didn't have nearly enough for Dean's liking. And despite how many months they'd been searching for an electric weapon that would be good enough to down a Toclafane, they hadn't even found a single stun gun. Ash was working on putting something together, but it wasn't quite ready yet.

"If we're gonna take down the Master we need more guns," Dean said, "better guns."

"According that doctor – Ducky – the guns won't work," Sam pointed out from where he stood behind Adam.

"Can't hurt to try," Dean muttered.

"And what if you do get a chance to shoot him?" Sam scowled, "What if you get a clear shot and you take it and he doesn't die? What then?"

"Well then I guess I'll die knowing I tried," Dean snapped, glaring at his brother darkly.

"Damn it, Dean!" Sam's jaw tightened and he shook his head, muttering swears under his breath before turning back to Adam and correcting his stance. Adam and Henricksen remained – smartly – silent about the argument. They'd been snapping at each other on and off for more than a month now and getting in the way had already cost Garth and Martin a couple of new bruises when one of the brothers lashed out.

Sam's grip on Adam's shoulders was a bit tight, but Adam just nodded as Sam explained how to take aim and pull the hammer down before squeezing the trigger. They'd been working with revolvers and handguns for a few days and Sam was leery of teaching Adam to shoot the rifle, remembering the bruises he'd gotten as a kid when he hadn't been as mindful of the kickback as he should've.

By now, though, Adam could brace himself against the force of the shot from the revolver and his aim was surprising good for a first-timer.

"Don't know why you're teaching him how to shoot anyway," Dean said off-handedly. "He's not going out there."

Sam let go of Adam's shoulders, turning to send Dean a venomous glare, "Dean, he needs to –"

"He needs to stay here where it's safe so he doesn't get himself killed!" Dean talked over him, practically yelling at that point. "Sending some kid out there is a bad idea, Sam and you know it."

Adam sighed and met Henricksen's eyes over Dean's shoulder, making a face. Henricksen just smiled and shook his head. If Sam and Dean kept up their fighting, Henricksen was pretty sure they'd start shooting at each other eventually. They'd been stuck together for too long as far as he could tell. But no matter what Rufus, Gordon or anyone else said, they refused to work without each other. It was a strange relationship, that much was for sure.

~/.\~

"Doing okay, Gus?" Charlie was walking ahead of her newfound companion, with Gandalf the cat trailing around her ankles. She glanced back behind her to see Gus struggling a bit to keep up. They'd been walking for several hours and were just inside Sacramento – finally.

Gus had wanted them to head for Santa Barbara, but then remembered that he and McNab had been in Sacramento when they were attacked months previous and Charlie suggested that they start there instead, in case they found his friends looking for him there.

They'd spent much of the past few months traveling very slowly across California. Gus' wound had taken a considerable amount of time to heal and Charlie was still worried that it wasn't healed properly. The bleeding had stopped and she made sure to help him clean and change his bandages every day, but the skin was swollen and raw looking around the smooth edges of the cut. At least it didn't smell of infection and nothing appeared to leak out of it.

"I'm good," Gus sounded tired as he replied, taking in deep gulps on air.

Charlie pressed her lips together and stopped, waiting for Gus to catch up to her.

"Maybe we should stop for the day,"

"No, no," Gus shook his head, waiving his good hand and looking apologetic. "I've already slowed us down enough. We're so close now…"

"We'll get there," Charlie promised, "but you're not looking so good, Gus. Look, it's almost sundown anyway. Let's just find some place to crash and I'll try to charge the laptop and hop on the network and see what the others are saying, alright? We'll get food and take off first time tomorrow morning."

Charlie had been talking with other hackers in the network of the resistance for the past several months. They'd formed a sort of strange friendship in their mutual hatred for the Master. Of course, Charlie wasn't one who was normally violent, but she had to admit, she really wanted to rip off that bastard's face. She was a bit upset when Sarah Jane explained that they had a plan, but that assassination wasn't it. Charlie supposed that did make sense if killing the Master really would be as difficult as they were all saying – "The really evil ones always need a special sword!"* she'd ranted to Gus.

They were still working on trying to get the plan across over Archangel; no one was quite ready to send sensitive information over the network in fear of the Master intercepting it. But they'd been able to learn a lot over the network about how they could band together and the plan to find some sort of electrical weapon to down a Toclafane was in motion, as far as Charlie knew, in several parts of the world.

Charlie only wished that she had something to build an electric laser gun with. That would not only have been totally awesome, but very useful in defending themselves.

"Well, alright. It is getting pretty late. We should conserve our energy as much as possible," Gus nodded, but he looked guilty and Charlie gave him a reassuring smile to assure him that she wasn't bothered by having to slow down for him. After all, they were his friends they were looking for. Charlie didn't exactly have any family or even friends to be locating anyway and it felt nice to help someone else who needed it.

She bent and lifted Gandalf into her arms so that he wouldn't wander off, "Alright, I think we're pretty close to an abandoned neighborhood. We might even get to sleep in actual beds tonight. If they still have mattresses…"

~/.\~

Juliet clung to Shawn as she hobbled her way to the kitchen area. It was nearly nightfall and most everyone else was getting ready to retire to bed, but Juliet couldn't sleep. She had been walking more on her own for the past week or so, but the muscle damage in her leg was severe and walking was difficult. She more hopped than walked and Lassiter and Rigsby had recently set about making her some kind of walker or cane so that she could move around more freely.

Juliet, of course, hated that she wasn't able to do more on her own and really hated that no one wanted her to go back outside of the safe house with her leg so mangled. She wanted to do be and help more, but that was sadly impossible.

"I thought you were going out with your dad to search for Gus again?" she asked, glancing up at Shawn as he helped her ease down into a chair.

Shawn's mouth pulled down into a frown for just a second, but then he forcibly made himself smile as he shook his head, "Not tonight," he said, "Tonight is about you and me…" His eyes sparkled just a bit and he half-sang the end of his words, making Juliet want to laugh.

"So what'll it be, Jules? We've got uh, jerky, more jerky, we've got some crackers and water and ooh, look, coffee!"

"It's a little late for coffee, Shawn,"

Shawn nodded and searched through their meager food supplies. They didn't have much aside from dry foods and a couple of candy bars that everyone agreed they should allow the children to have.

"I would kill for a Pineapple-Mango smoothie…" Shawn sighed forlornly as he turned back to face Juliet and she laughed, shaking her head.

"Mmm, a smoothie would nice, wouldn't it?"

Shawn smiled, "Well then, I'll make you one!"

She snorted, "You're going to make me a smoothie?" she asked, "With what?"

"With my awesome smoothie superpowers!" Shawn said, "I am Smoothie Man!"

Juliet couldn't stop herself from laughing as Shawn made an ultra-serious face, thrust one arm into the air and cried out "Da dada da!" before diving into their supplies with zeal. Moments later, he pulled out one bright red apple and tossed it around between his hands, frowning at it.

"How is this the only fruit we have?" he demanded, "This is a disgrace! Not one delicious citrus fruit! No mangos, no oranges, none of those awesome little tangelo things…"

Juliet smiled at him, "An apple is fine, Shawn,"

He sighed dramatically, but handed her the apple and sat down across from her, "You mark my words, Jules," he said, "I will make you a smoothie. I will."

She bit into the apple and nodded, "Alright," she said, "When all of this over, you owe me a smoothie. In fact, we can have a whole smoothie party and invite everyone."

Shawn's eyes were so bright, Juliet was reminded of how things had been before the Decimation. Before the last few months of fruitless searches for Gus had made Shawn turn into a shadow of his former self. She hated seeing him so sad and un-Shawn-like.

The moment was brief and ended quickly whenever Lisbon walked into the kitchen with Dr. Holloway, talking about one of the kids who had come down with a fever that morning and wasn't getting any better.

Juliet turned her gaze away from Shawn and listen to their conversation, feeling Shawn's eyes on her the entire time.

~/.\~

"It's weird isn't it?" Fornell glanced over at Rossi where the former agent sat next to him at the table. They had been playing poker – Fornell, Rossi, Hotch, Morgan, Reid, Ducky and Tony – a few minutes earlier, but the game had ended after Reid won nearly every hand and Tony and Morgan were accusing the younger man of cheating. At the moment, Fornell and Rossi were simply sitting at the rickety old table, watching everyone else go about their usual business.

Abby, Garcia and McGee were at the computers, talking in a language Fornell didn't understand – though he liked to think he was at least more fluent in tech-speak than Gibbs was. They'd been communicating with the other hackers that they'd found inside Archangel for the past few months, developing plans for figuring out more about the Toclafane and for taking down the Master.

They were hearing that there was a plan – a plan from the Doctor no less – in motion, but everyone was still worried about communicating it over the network and risking the Master intercepting it. Right now, they were still operating under their assassination plan, at least until they could learn what the Doctor wanted them to do. Their closest allies had strangely turned out to the those hunters they'd made contact with early on. In spite of their somewhat ridiculous claims of hunting demons, they were competent and they had a lot of people slowly beginning to join their movement as they planned.

Fornell didn't follow everything from their tech-talks, but he was glad they were able to connect to so many people. That Sarah Jane woman that they had contacted before seemed to be the one leading everything. She knew the most about the Doctor, the most about the plans and had some surprisingly advanced technology – her supercomputer was apparently just the tip of the iceberg as they learned she also had a robotic dog she called K-9. Abby and Garcia had both exclaimed jealously at that and McGee had started to wonder if he could build one before Tony started teasing him about needing a fake dog instead of a real one.

Hotch and Jessica were sitting on the ratty old couch with Jack between them, his head resting on Jessica's arm as they told him a story to help him get to sleep after he'd had a nightmare. Morgan and Reid were talking to Ducky and Gibbs about battle strategies and the next weapons run that they needed to make – Reid was still upset that he wasn't allowed to leave, but everyone remained adamant about keeping him safe. Tony and Prentiss were cooped up on a blanket on the floor, another blanket wrapped around them. Tony had his arm around Prentiss' shoulder.

Fornell was certain it wouldn't be long before those two stop pretended to just be close friends.

Rossi turned toward Fornell and frowned, "What is?"

It took Fornell a moment to remember his question and then he looked back out at the eclectic group of people who'd become allies and friends over the last few months. "How normal this all seems," he said. "I swear, sometimes it really doesn't feel like the Apocalypse is hanging over our heads,"

Rossi nodded, but his eyes were distant, "Until you hear on one of the Master's broadcasts that someone you knew is dead now," he said, shaking his head. "And what happened to Japan…"

Fornell's face hardened a bit at that and he nodded, "We'll get this son of a bitch," he said, "It might take time but…" he looked around again at the group, "these are some damn good people. We'll get him."

~/.\~

"Is it finished yet?" Sherlock asked, leaning over to watch Tosh and Jake as they worked. In the last few months, they managed to get entirely out of Wales and were somewhere just outside of London, though nothing was really recognizable any longer so they might as well have been anywhere.

They were not far from one of the larger weapons factories and had made a safe home in what Sherlock said had once been a bomb shelter. It had needed quite a bit of work to be livable, but they had needed somewhere to stay hidden where they wouldn't have to be so mobile any longer and it had been perfect. Tosh had set up her laptop and eventually managed to connect to Archangel, where she was surprisingly greeted by a whole network of hackers trying to break in.

They began to plan and converse over the network in code – the code was ever evolving to become harder to crack and Tosh hoped eventually they would be confident enough with it for her to start sharing the Doctor's plan around to world to help Martha a bit. They'd even been able to speak to Martha a few times and tried to keep in touch with Kate as well. Both women were traveling quite a lot, but neither were always able to stay in touch, which could be annoying.

As soon as they'd learned – from a group of agents in the USA via Sarah Jane – about the Toclafane's weakness to electrical charges, Tosh had set about making a weapon that would help them disable a Toclafane so that they could try to figure out what they were and if they had any other weaknesses.

It was slow going, unfortunately, and getting parts for the device wasn't exactly a walk in the park, but Tosh felt she was getting close and Jake had a pretty good grasp on engineering himself and had been helping her a lot.

Owen was… better. He still hardly talked to anyone and they all avoided talking about the incident a couple of months ago whenever he discharged his gun very near Sherlock's head. He swore he wasn't trying to kill him, but if Sherlock had gotten out of the way as quickly as he had, Tosh feared he would've been dead. After that though, Owen seemed to simmer down. He didn't speak much, but he was a lot less volatile than he had been. He stuck mostly to tending to John wound. John was getting better at moving around, though he had a very pronounced limp and it was obvious that walking hurt him.

For his part, Sherlock seemed unfazed by his near-death experience and remained as unflappable as always. Tosh had to wonder sometimes whether or not Sherlock was truly human.

She smacked the tall man's hand away as he reached for the weapon and shook her head, "Not yet," she said, "We're nearly there."

Jake handed her a small metal piece and she bent her head to fasten it to the device – which looked very much like a over-large gun fashioned out of spare bits of scrap – and after several more adjustments she straightened up, smiling broadly.

"Finished!" she said, "Now we just need to find a Toclafane and test it."

"Should be too difficult," John said, glancing toward the exit, "They're everywhere out there. We can go out tonight and have a look,"

"I think myself and Jake should do it," Sherlock said, "We're the best shots of all of us, after all."

Owen started to protest, but Tosh sent him a pleading sort of look and he consented, nodding his head.

"Alright," Jake grinned, lifting the gun, studying it carefully, "Can't wait to try this bad boy out and fry some of those metal monsters…"

~/.\~

Spencer grimaced when the Master's hand dropped heavily down on his shoulder and squeezed tightly. He wanted to move away, but the Master held him in place and his hands were bound tightly behind his back, much like the Doctor's and Clive, Francine and Tish's. Jack was strapped down with heavy chains and had two guards on him, unable to move or do anything except send angry glares at the Master.

They were all on the upper deck, surrounded by guards and staring down at the earth below, watching as the fires leapt higher and consumed everything. Though they couldn't make out much detail from where they were, the Master had been more than happy to tell them exactly what was happening. Japan was burning. Slowly and horribly. There had been a "mishap" in one of the factories that had set off an explosion that had been burning for three days now, spreading across the island nation.

In the past few months, they had made two more escape attempts, the second less than a week ago. It had very nearly succeeded, which had put the Master in a foul mood to say the least. Spencer was no longer being kept in the conference room at night and instead found himself either chained up in the lower cells – alone and separate from the others – or chained in the Master's bedroom.

The Doctor looked the worst of all – battered and bruised and still bleeding in some places. Spencer wasn't sure how much more he could take, but he seemed to be handling it fairly well. Far better than the Jones family. Tish had a hollow, empty look in her eyes and Spencer wasn't sure if she'd ever be able to recover from what was happening. He hoped desperately that they would eventually be able to get her and her family off the ship. So far they hadn't been successful, but the Doctor was adamant that they keep trying anyway, even if he wasn't going to go with them.

Jack was still wearing his bloody clothes, his shirt torn and stained. The Master had killed him slowly, making him wait days to die, slowly torturing him and keeping him right on the brink of death before allowing him to finally sink into it.

He'd made the Doctor and Reid watch that. Spencer had begun having nightmares and the Master seemed entirely too pleased about that. Not only that, but Lucy was withdrawing further into herself and after the Master had punished her – Spencer didn't know what he did to her, only that she had abruptly changed, becoming an even more empty version of herself – she refused to speak to anyone unless the Master told her to.

Their best ally was completely dead inside and Spencer wished there was something he could do for her, but he was having enough trouble just trying to protect himself. He felt useless. And disgusting as the Master moved his hand from his shoulders and to his hair, tugging his head back and angling it so that he had to look at the fire burning below.

"I could probably save them," he said, "but I'm not really in the mood after that stunt you pulled. Maybe if you'd been better behaved all those people wouldn't have to be dying slowly right now…"

Reid's stomach twisted and he wanted to close his eyes, but he'd already tried that and the Master had nearly broken one of his ribs so he kept his eyes on the fire and tried not to cry. He could hear the Doctor choking back something that sounded like a curse or a sob and he wanted to hug him, to hold him and tell him that this wasn't his fault. The Master especially didn't want them speaking to each other, however, and Reid knew better than to try to say anything with him so close.

He'd thought he felt hopeless before, but watching an entire nation burn below and feeling overwhelmingly like there had been something he should have done was the lowest place Spencer had ever been before. They still had so long before the weapons would be ready and the Master's plan for universal war would be implemented. He hoped desperately that wherever she was, Martha was getting the word out about the plan. He hoped that the Doctor was right about this, because he wasn't sure what he would do if the plan failed.

~/.\~

A/N: Alright guys, you've gotta sing happy birthday with me because by an astounding coincidence, today is this story's one year anniversary! I started this story a full year ago and it's still going. Holy crap that's amazing to me.

I really felt like the story wasn't moving fast enough. Things are going to move a lot faster now, though I don't expect any more large time-skips, at least for a while. A few days, a couple of weeks at the most. I want to move this along at a better pace.

Also: the line from Charlie about the evil guys needing a special sword is totally stolen from her first episode on Supernatural, "The Girl with the Dungeons and Dragons Tattoo".

And also, a few things:

The Supernatural finale: WHAT ARE THEY TRYING TO DO? KILL ME? JESUS CHRIST THAT WAS AN EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOSTER OF PAIN! I mean… Sam and Dean and Cas and, and CROWLEY. I was halfway between sobbing and screaming (and let's not talk about Sam and Dean's emotional thing because I'll drown…)

The Criminal Minds finale: Those bastards! Again, no spoilers, but really, that was just totally uncalled for and good god… Poor Rossi. I just… I wanted to hug him. And then what he did at the end… *mind is mush now* And Hotch's brother and the Replicator and… Just oh my god. That was amazing, but it was unfair and it hurt.

The Doctor Who finale: OH MY GOD THAT WAS THE MOST AMAZING THING I'VE EVER SEEN! Seriously, you guys, that was brilliant! Clara and the Doctor and River and Madam Vastra and Jenny and Strax and – and – ONE! Did you guys see that? SERIOUSLY THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER.

And that's all. I rambled on for too long already. Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Please, please review!